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HOW TO KEEP BEES

boiler method. The best of these machines for a small apiary is the Swiss extractor, which may be set over a kettle of hot water, like an ordinary vegetable steamer, which it resembles. The comb is placed in a wire basket, which has a cone-shaped bottom, over which the wax flows down as it melts and drains off through a spout into a pan in which it is to be caked. This machine costs only three or four dollars and is simple and excellent; though it takes but comparatively little comb at a time, it keeps up a continual performance and there is no danger whatever of burning the wax. The basket may be replenished from time to time, and a large amount of wax may be extracted in a day while other work is being performed in the room. Mr. Root has an improved Swiss extractor and so has Mr. D. A. Jones, and both of them are most satisfactory. Mr. Jones's machine is the larger and may be used as an uncapping can as well; the cappings when taken off falling directly into the extractor.

THE WAX-PRESS

Wax is such a precious product in these days of the manufacture of foundation-comb that every particle of it should be saved. This is quite impossible with any of the extractors; as the slumgum always holds much wax, to extract which a wax-press is needed. All wax-presses are necessarily rather expensive machines when bought, and not very easily manufactured at home. In some of them the