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THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL* 



Dec. 29, 1904, 



or not. I am simply stating that the price of cornb- 

 honey may be two or three times as much as the price 

 sugar is now. 



Mr. Kretchmer — I would like to ask the doctor if 

 he ever estimated the actual cost of feeding sugar in 

 building comb? 



Mr. Rhees — Dr. Miller and I live in two different sec- 

 tions of the country. We have no beet-sugar factories 

 in our county in Utah; we have land that is capable of 

 growing beets in that locality, but the sugar people are 

 working for their own interests. The wholesale price 

 of honey is about six cents a pound, and I am offering 

 my honey crop of 6,000 pounds at five and a half cents; 

 the package cost me three-quarters of a cent. That is ex- 

 tracted honey. If I were going to feed bees anything, I 

 would not feed them sugar at six cents a pound, I would 

 prefer to feed them the honey. Take California, Colo- 

 rado, Idaho, Utah, Nevada and Arizona and the figures 

 will stand the same. 



Mr. Abbott — I want to go on record again in this 

 statement. A few years ago a noted professor and some 

 others talked this subject and discussed it, and I asserted 

 then, and I assert now, that there is no similarity between 

 the product produced by feeding sugar to bees and mak- 

 ing honey, and the natural honey; that sugar put into 

 combs by bees is sugar syrup, and nothing else, and not 

 honey; I defy anybody to prove it is honey or anything 

 like honey. 



Mr. Kretchmer — The syrup is entirely different from 

 the nectar, and can easily be distinguished. Two years 

 ago I gathered a small bunch of bees in the fall and I 

 tried to experiment. I put them in a hive and gave them 

 warm sugar, stirred it up well together with water, then 

 I set it right before the bees and they came out nicely 

 and ate it, and I may state they produced the whitest 

 comb that you ever saw in your life, and I think before 

 the other bees came robbing there was honey in there. 

 I would state the acid the bees mixed with it keeps the 

 honey, and that honey is just as good as if taken out of 

 the flower. 



Mr. Stewart — With regard to the statement made this 

 morning, that glucose could be fed and made into the 

 form of comb honey and sold, I have had a little experience on 

 that line. I have taken glucose in the scarcity of the 

 honey-flow and tried to get a colony of bees to eat it. I 

 tried it in a half a dozen different ways. One trial was 

 I took clear white glucose that the grocery man gave to 

 me, and I spread part of it on top of the brood-frames 

 and marked that hive. I looked every day for five days 

 to see how much of that was eaten, and I couldn t see 

 that it was reduced in quantity at all. I took my knife 

 and tried to scrape it off and it was like so much India 

 rubber. Then I took some of it and weighed two quan- 

 tities, putting in part of the quantity with honey and part 

 with glucose. I kept increasing the quantity of honey 

 until I got it at least half or two-thirds honey, until I 

 got the bees to eat it. So I say that clear glucose can- 

 not be given to the bees and be made to appear in any 

 manner as comb honey. 



Mr. Root — I have conducted almost the same experi- 

 ments with the same result. I took glucose and daubed 

 it all over the front of the hive, and daubed the bees up 

 so that they would clean each other off, and they wouldn't 

 do it; I put it out in the yard and put the honey with it 

 and I had to make it about fifty percent honey before the 

 bees would touch it. Very recently the Brooklyn Eagle 

 editor came out and said bees could be fed glucose. Two 

 of us got after him pretty hard and the result of it was 

 he came out in a subsequent statement and said it could 

 not be done, that he had a bee-keeper try it. 



Mr. DeLong — I gave a statement at the convention 

 in Nebraska in 1896 in regard to an experiment I had 

 tried to feed bees on glucose, when it first came out; it 

 was five or six years ago; I got some of the glucose that 

 was very nice and white. I thought it was granulated, 

 but it just kind of floured down someway. I thought I 

 would dilute it and have two gallons of nice white syrup 

 instead of one, and the next morning the whole of the 

 stuff had decomposed, and the dog wouldn't eat it. I 

 want to say that the reason a bee can't eat it, and won't 

 eat it, is because it decomposes as soon as it mixes with 

 the larvae, and you can't fool bees; they know what it is. 

 You couldn't feed any of this audience on stuff that would 

 decompose in a few minutes and make them sick and al; 

 most kill them. This old nut that has been cracked, about 



making comb honey, this Association ought to set that 

 down as a famous old lie, and those intelligent people of 

 the Home Journal ought to know better than to publish 

 such stuff. I eternally hate this glucose; it will kill the 

 young bees in the larvae state when it is fed. There is 

 one miserable packing company that puts up a nostrum, 

 I call it, with a little piece of comb in it, and call it pure 

 California white clover honey. Those California folks 

 know how much white clover grows out there. I said, 

 that is a nostrum, and there is no honey in it. There are 

 very few bee men if they are honest (and there are not 

 many of them that are not honest) that put up any such 

 stuff; and I think this Association ought to pass a reso- 

 lution that this old thing of manufactured comb honey 

 is a notorious old lie. I told those folks up in Lincoln 

 that if we wanted to, if we could make 200 per cent on 

 feeding glucose to the bees, we couldn't do it; we would 

 kill all our bees. It is as bad as foul brood. 



Mr. Dadant — The remarks just made have suggested 

 to me the idea that our convention should pass a certain 

 resolution as to their opinion in regard to manufactured 

 honey or adulterated honey, and I wish to present this 

 resolution to be referred to a committee: 



"Resolved, That this convention asserts that no ar- 

 tificial comb honey has ever been or can be produced. 

 That there is no profit in feeding anything to the bees 

 to fill the bees to be sold as honey. That the only suc- 

 cessful adulteration ever made has been by liquid honey 

 out of the comb." 



This is a matter I think we can assert as a body, and, 

 I believe it will do a great deal of good. 



The President put the motion which, on a vote having 

 been taken was declared carried, and the resolution re- 

 ferred to the commitee on resolutions to report back. 



Dr. Miller — At what price can I produce what ap- 

 pears to be comb honey by feeding sugar to the bees? 



Mr. Stewart — We don't want you to feed any sugar, 

 Doctor. 



Mr. Reinecke — We found it necessary one fall to 

 feed our bees, and we found we didn't get enough honey 

 to pay for the sugar. 



Mr. Hyde: I do not believe anyone in the house can 

 answer this question, I have asked Mr. Scholl, and if you 

 request it, he will conduct an experiment next summer to 

 arrive at a satisfactory conclusion. 



Dr. Miller — I move that we thankfully request Prof. 

 Scholl to make thorough experiment upon this subject. 

 I know he is competent to do it. [Carried]. 



Prof. Scholl — I am one of the bashful kind of little 

 fellows, and a little afraid; if I was a little bigger I might 

 get up and do some talking, but the way I al- 

 ways do, I let my bees buzz and I do the looking 

 on and let them work for me; and when I get into a con- 

 vention I let the other people talk, and sometimes I take 

 notes of things, and when I get home I sometimes ex- 

 periment and that is what I am going to do here. In- 

 stead of talking I am just going to listen and hear what 

 you are going to talk about, and then later on maybe I 

 can tell you all something. I don't know whether I could 

 tell you anything now or not. Maybe after I get through 

 my excitedness I will buzz a little while. 



Fifth Session — Thursday, September 29: 



The President called the convention to order at 9 

 a. m., and Dr. Miller offered prayer. 



Mr. Abbott — The committee on incorporation has 

 looked the matter over carefully, and they can simply 

 ask for more time, and they desire that the committee be 

 continued until the next annual meeting, when they will 

 be prepared to present a thorough report. This matter 

 is of vital importance, and should not be done hastily. 



On motion of Mr. York, seconded by Mr. Hyde, the 

 special committee on incorporation was made a perma- 

 nent committee to report at the next annual meeting. 



President Harris then called upon Mr. Brown, of Cal- 

 ifornia, to present his paper on 



THE COLLECTIVE DISPOSAL OF OUR PRODUCT. 



Mr. Brown — I have touched this matter very briefly. 

 It is a subject that deserves a great deal of attention. We 

 could not do justice to the subject here in a place like 

 this, so I have onlv jotted down a few points which I 

 hope will start the ball rolling in the right direction. 



The individual disposal of our product is one which 

 is well known to us all. While it has some advantages, it 

 has many disadvantages and unsatisfactory results. Per- 



