HOW IT WORKS; NO WAX IN THE REFUSE. 
Friend E. R. Root:— In your "Notes from the Bicycle" in Gleanings or Sept. 15, you jagged my memory in regard to the talk we had when you were here over the solar wax-extractors, or I should likely have forgotten my promise to test the residue, or slumgum, by rendering it over with sulphuric acid, and thus save, as you hoped, some precious dollars, more or less— enough to more than pay me for the trouble. 

I had no expectations of finding wax in paying quantities, but I was just a little interested to know how well my solar extractors did their work. After procuring some sulphuric acid I looked up in back numbers of Gleanings the modus operandi of rendering wax by this process, and proceeded accordingly. Into a five-gallon stone crock I put 2 ½  gallons of soft water, and added a little over ¼  lb. of sulphuric acid. I then went to a barrel of the residue, the same that we examined when you were here, and from it I filled up the crock and left it to soak until next day. when I placed it upon the stove in the bee-house kitchen, and let it boil for some time. Then I let it remain and cool gradually. The next morning I went to investigate the results. Well, now, how much wax do you think I found cooled in a beautiful yellow cake on the surface? 

"Two pounds?" 
"Well, no." 
"One and a half pounds'?" 
"Hardly."

I was disappointed, and I am sure you will be when I tell you there wasn't any— no, not a trace of anything that looked like wax. Let me say I smiled as I passed the solar extractors that morning, and said, kind o' softly. "That was a pretty good joke you have played upon us." 
I have tried about all the plans for rendering wax that I have heard suggested or could think of and I would always find in the residue, after it had cooled, more or less wax in little yellow particles dispersed all through the mass. I was never satisfied with such wasteful methods. The solar extractor gives the only method of rendering wax that satisfies me. 

It might not be out of place to say here, the larger extractors give the best results. I should prefer them still larger than I now use. I think this is all the secret of my success with them (having them large). I can't see how the small ones that are used by so many bee-keepers can be made at all practical. The only imperfection I meet with in this method of rendering wax is, it will not work without sunshine. In this respect the solar extractors are somewhat like A. I. Root's old windmill for power, which would go only when the wind blow. 

I shall continue to use this wax residue for fuel, the only thing for which It has any value; and for this purpose, and especially for kindling fires, it has no equal. When the thrashers came this fall I had no coal for them to steam with, as they came unexpectedly; so I took out some boxes of slumgum and said to the fireman. "Try that." He did try it, and up went the steam; and he said it beat any thing he ever used to fire with before. "Now," said he, " I shall have a good story to tell when I am an old man, how I once fired an engine with bee-comb. 

H. R. Boardman. East Townsend, OH, Oct. 7. 1982

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