The process of making the foundation is very simple. Thin sheets of wax, as thin as is consistent with strength, are simply passed between the rollers, which are so made as to stamp worker or drone foundation, as may be desired. The rollers are well covered with starch-water to secure against adhesion. Two men can roll out about four hundred pounds per day. [Illustration: Fig. 67.] TO SECURE THE WAX SHEETS. To make the thin sheets of wax, Mr. A. I. Root takes sheets or plates of galvanized iron with a wooden handle. These are cooled by dipping in ice-water, and then are dipped two, or three times if the wax is very hot, in the melted wax, which is maintained at the proper temperature by keeping it in a double-walled vessel, with hot water in the outer chamber. Such a boiler, too, prevents burning of the wax, which would ruin it, while it is being melted. After dipping the plates in the wax, they are again dipped, when dripping has ceased, into the cold water, after which the sheets of wax are cleaved off, the plates brushed, wiped, cooled, and dipped again. The boiler used in melting the wax has the gate with a fine wire sieve attached near the top, so that the wax as it is drawn off into the second boiler, will be thoroughly cleansed. Mr. Root states that two men and a boy will thus make four hundred pounds of wax sheets in a day. Others use wooden plates on which to mold the sheets, while the Hetherington brothers prefer, and are very successful with a wooden cylinder, which is made to revolve in the melted wax, and is so hinged, that it can be speedily raised above or lowered into the liquid. For cutting foundation, nothing is so admirable as the Carlin cutter (Fig. 67, _a_), which is like the wheel glass-cutters sold in the shops, except that a larger wheel of tin takes the place of the one of hardened steel. Mr. A. I. Root has suggested a grooved board (Fig. 67, _b_) to go with the above, the distance between the grooves being equal to the desired width of the strips of comb foundation to be cut. USE OF FOUNDATION. I have used foundation, as have many other more extensive apiarists, with perfect success in the section-boxes. The bees have so thinned it that even epicures could not tell comb-honey with such foundation, from that wholly made by the bees. Yet, I forbear recommending it for such use. When such men as Hetherington, Moore, Ellwood, and L. C. Root, protest against a course, it is well to pause before we adopt it; so, while I have used foundation, I think with some small advantage in sections and boxes for three years, I shall still pronounce against it. It will not be well to have the word artificial hitched on to our comb-honey. I think it exceedingly wise to maintain inviolate in the public mind the idea that comb-honey is _par excellence_, a natural product. And as Captain Hetherington aptly suggests, this argument is all the more weighty, in view of the filthy condition of much of our commercial beeswax.