HIVES, EVOLUTION OF. 



255 



HONEY. 



er had no claim to the invention of the 

 hanging movable comb, to say nothing of 

 the bee-space and the movable roof, which 

 are essential features of the hive. 



debalvoy's hive, 1845 ; invented in fkance 

 before i.ancistkoth's hive appeared. 



Langstroth's invention, accompanied by 

 an excellent treatise on the art of keeping 

 bees, created a revolution in bee-keeping in 

 a short time, linking his name with that of 

 Huber as the two founders of modern api- 

 culture. 



HIVES, MANIPULATING. SeeFKAMES, 

 TO Manipulate. 



HIVE -STANDS. See Apiary. 



HOARHOUND ( Marrubium vii Igare ) . 

 This is quite an important honey-plant in 

 Texas. It begins yielding some time in 

 February, and continues to furnish nectar 

 until quite late in tlie summer, or until hot 

 dry weather sets in. The honey is of a 

 golden color, and good body, but not a nice 

 table honey. It has been said that it is not 

 fit to eat, being very bitter; but Louis H. 

 Scholl, of Texas, declares this is hardly the 

 case in his locality ; that the honey has a 

 very sweet taste, liked by some but nauseat- 

 ing to others. It is said to have pronounced 

 medicinal qualities, and we believe is de- 

 scribed in the pharmacopoeia as a medicine. 



HOLIiT. See Gallberry. 



HOLT-LAND BEES. See ITALIANS. 



"' KOSTEir. Every reader of a work of 

 this kind is supposed to know, of course, 

 what honey is; and yet there may be a good 

 many who have only a superficial idea of it, 

 and perhaps a very brief statement should 

 be made. 



According to the Century Dictionary, 

 " Honey is a sweet viscid fluid collected from 

 the nectaries of flowers, and elaborated for 



food by several kinds of insects, esjecially 

 by the honey-bee ( Jp^'s mdlijica).'''' An ac- 

 cepted German definition is, "Honey is the 

 nectar obtained fiom flowers by woiker 

 bees, which, after modificatit n in the honey- 

 stomach of the latter, is stored in tie ct lis of 

 the comb for the nourishment of the young 

 brood." In tLis countiy the food standiuds 

 consider "honey as tl.e nectar and saccha- 

 rine exudations of plants gathered, modified, 

 and stored in tlie comb by honey-bees [Apis 

 meUifica and Apis dorsata).'''' In the latttr 

 detin.tion there is included, besides the nec- 

 tar of flowers, also saccharine exudation of 

 plants. This comes about in that many 

 plants contain sugar in their saps, and, when 

 an exudation of sap takes place, and the 

 water in the sap is evaporated, a saccharii.e 

 residue remains, which is gathered by the 

 bees. Also, many trees exude a sweet sai» 

 when stung by some insect, and this is also 

 gathered by the lees (see Honey-dew). 



Honey in itself is approximately a pure 

 saccharine substance, naturally flavored, ai:d 

 fontaining aromas imparted to it by the 

 flower and the bee. Its chemical composi- 

 tion shows it to contain, for the greater part, 

 two sugars, dextrose and levulcse, in about 

 equal quantities, also generally (but not al- 

 ways) sucrose. The other substances, in or- 

 der of their quantity, are dextrins, acids, ash, 

 and a number of substances whose nature 

 and composition have not been thoroughly 

 worked out. An average analj sis of Amer- 

 ican honey given by Brown in Bulletin 1 Ui. 

 Buieau of Chemistry, United States Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture, shows — 



Moisture .... 17.70 per cent. 



Levulose .... 40.50 per cent . 



Dextrose .... 34.02 per cent. 



Sucrose 1.90 per ceiit. 



Ash 0.18 per cent. 



Dextrin 1.51 per cent. 



Uneletermined . . 4.19 per cent. 



Total 100.00 per cent. 



Under the national pure-food law, "A 

 honey should be Ijevorotatory, and should 

 contain not more than twenty-five per cei t 

 of water, not more than twenty-five hun- 

 dredths per cent of ash, and not more than 

 eight per cent of sucrose." All floral honeys 

 are laevorotatory— that is, turn the plane of 

 polarized light to the left, while honey-dew 

 is dextro-rotatory— that is, turns the plane of 

 polarized light to the right. In mixtures of 

 floral honey and honey-dew, honey which 

 bees of ten collect together, the polarization 

 is about the only means of deterniining 

 whether the product deserves the name of 

 pure honey. 



