REPORT OF THE CHEMIST 



169 



SESSIONAL PAPER No. 16 



RIPE AND UNRIPE HONEY. 



At the request of the Bee-keepers' Association of Ontario we undertook in 1901 

 to ascertain -what differences in composition might exist between honey taken from 

 uncapped and capped comb, respectively. Honey from the former is known to bee- 

 keepers as immature or unripe, and is generally held to have poor keeping qualities, and 

 therefore its sale either by itself or mixed with ripe honey is a detriment to the honey 

 trade. 



In the endeavour to determine the percentage of moisture in the honeys we encount- 

 ered at the outset certain difficulties, and quickly reached the conclusion that the 

 method employed in obtaining the results on Canadian honeys already on record (Bul- 

 letin No. 47, Inland Revenue Department) was unreliable. This method involved the 

 drying of the honey .solution on asbestos in a steam oven at 96° C. to 98° C. Under these 

 conditions there is a continuous decomposition of the levulose, resulting in an apparent 

 loss of moisture far in excess of the real percentage present. Further experiments were 

 then made, employing lower temperatures, drying in a partial vacuum, <kc., and an 

 account of the results obtained presented to the Bee-keepers' Association at their Con- 

 vention in "Woodstock, Out., in December, 1901, and have since been published in the 

 proceedings of that association. Our conclusions then were of a tentative character, 

 but the data certainly indicated that the uncapped or immature honey contained more 

 water — probably between three and five per cent — than the fully capped or ripe honey, 

 and, furtlier, that the immature honey has a tendency to ferment and spoil. 



In the early months of the present year the analytical methods were more critically 

 examined by Mr. A. T. Charron and the writer and a large amount of work done on 

 various honeys and mixtures of dextrose and levulose in order to learn the most reliable 

 way to estimate the water-content of such substances. This investigation was successful, 

 but as the results are of a purely chemical nature and have appeared in the transactions 

 of the Royal Society (1902), it will not be necessary to here reproduce them. 



Our revised data on the 1901 samples are given briefly in the following table, which 

 will scarcely require any words of explanation : — 



Table I. — Water in Honey, 1901. 



It will be seen that in addition to the main object of the inquiry, we endeavoured 

 to ascertain what effect upon extracted honey might result (a) from keeping it in a 

 closed vessel (as in glass stoppered bottles), and (b) open to the air (as in a vessel 

 covered with cheese cloth). 



Further, half of the samples were stored in the honey-room in a small outbuilding, 

 and half in a cellar, which was, however, dry and well ventilated. 



The honey from the fully capped comb contained from four per cent to five per cent 

 less water than that from the partially or entirely uncapped comb. 

 16-lli 



