41st YEAR. 



CHICAGO, ILL,, SEPTEMBER 26, 1901, 



No, 39, 



Editorial. ^ f 



Bees and Pear-Blight.— The fruit and 

 bee men of California seem to be sensiljle 

 enough to get along without quarreling and 

 lawing, and certainly some of the bee-men 

 show an excellent spirit. They have agreed 

 to move their bees away from the pear or- 

 chards during the blooming period, so as to 

 help solve the question whether the bees are 

 the chief criminals. The views of some of 

 the scientific men are given in Gleanings in 

 Bee-Culture. Prof. Waite seems inclined to 

 pass judgment against the bees, but at the 

 same time considers them a necessary evil, for 

 he says he has found as the result of an ex- 

 tensive series of experiments " that ijees are 

 indispensable to the pollination and setting 

 of most of our pomaeeous fruits." Prof. Cook 

 says: 



■'I have little doubt that bees do aid in 

 scattering the virus ; but I am far from con- 

 vinced that their removal will abate the 

 trouble, or is wise and necessary.'" 



Prof. (HUette thinks it will be a consider- 

 able time before we can draw any positive 

 conclusions. He thinks that if the bees were 

 the chief operators the late varieties of pears 

 should sutler more from blight than the early 

 ones, and he has not observed this to be the 

 case. 



"Honey AVithout Bees."— Dr. R. H. 



Strickland, of Perry Co., Tenn., sends us the 

 following, which appeared in an advertise- 

 ment taken "from a scientific ( <) quasi- 

 medical journal :" 



HONEY WITHOUT BEES. 



This is an age of. marvelous discoveries and 

 inventions. Every day brings forth some- 

 thing new, and every year is marked by some 

 astounding discovery which completely up- 

 sets all preconceived notions in some depart- 

 ment of knowledge or industry. Marvelous 

 iliscoveries have been made in electricity and 

 the uses of steam and the utilization of the 

 various forces of nature, but a discovery 

 which is really more far-reaching in its re- 

 sults, and perhaps capable of immediately 

 benefiting a larger number of persons, is a 

 process worked out by an eminent physician 

 by years of laboratory research, whereby it is 

 possible to make honey directly from wheat 

 and other cereals without the aid of chemicals 

 of any sort, and by a process essentially 

 identical with that by which honey is manu- 

 factured by plants ready to be ruHn-tnl ami 

 xliireil liij Ike cuntimg little feel of the Iwneij-bee. 



Malt honey, or meltose, looks like honey, 

 tdxirx like ImtwiJ, in rhemicnl rmnpontkm in 

 rxseiitinlhi the xiime <l« hwLey. and as a f'imtl ix 

 s„lieriur'ln /i,„irii, since it is fnefrnm f/enns. 

 pulleii. t'ra;/riiruts itf fiowerx, (lust, and iitlier 

 foreign iita'ttn-s. and may be eaten without in- 



jurious effects, even by most delicate indi- 

 viduals, whereas many persons can not eat 

 honey, even in small quantities, without ex- 

 periencing ill effects. Alalt honetj is (yenuiue 

 lioneii ; 7wt an imitation, or a substitute, but tlie 

 real thing, derived from the original source— 

 the plant — Ijut without the assistance of bees, 

 and by a jirocess which renders it absolutely 

 pure and wholesome. It is the only sweet 

 which can be eaten in liberal amounts with- 

 out injurious effects. — [Italics are ours. — En. | 

 We feel a just pride in the perfection of this 

 very remarkable and useful product, after 

 spending some years and thousands of dollars 

 in research for the purpose. 



Dr. Strickland says in his letter accom- 

 panying the foregoing, " It may not be worth 

 noticing." Well, it certainly wouldn't be 

 •' worth noticing " were it not for the manner 

 in which the thing is described and adver- 

 tised. 



If its discoverer doesn't know any more 

 about food products than he does about the 

 way bees gather and store honey, he is truly 

 a fine specimen of ignoramus. Think of bees 

 collecting and storing the nectar of flowers 

 with their "cunning little feet!" If that 

 were true, they ought to store about six times 

 as much as they do, as they have six times as 

 much feet as tongue. It this learned (?) food 

 inventor were right, bee-keepers would be 

 breeding for more and longer feet than for 

 longer tongue-reach in their bees. 



Well, we secured a sample of the wonder- 

 ful (?) "meltose" that is said "looks like 

 honey, tastes like honey, and in chemical 

 composition is essentially the same as honey." 

 etc. If honey were like It, we would care for 

 no more honey. It has a taste (to us) almost 

 like sorghum molasses, is thick and cloudy, 

 resembling in appearance a poor quality of 

 glue or mucilage. If we were to put up for 

 the Chicago grocery trade stuff like it, and 

 call it honey, we would expect to kill our 

 trade on the first round among our custo- 

 mers. And yet, the great inventor of " mel- 

 tose " says It is " genuine honey " — " the real 

 thing I" True, he says bees had nothing to do 

 with its manufacture — and we believe him. 

 Bees wouldn't degrade themselves by turning 

 out a product like " meltose" — not from the 

 blossoms of white clover, basswood, sweet 

 clover, etc. The idea of man claiming he can 

 make honey equal, or superior, to that pro- 

 duced by bees'. (Of course we mean the best 

 grade of extracted honey, not honey-dew.) 



From the glowing advertisement of "mel- 

 tose," one might be led to think at is a sort of 

 comb honey. It isn't. It is simply an imita- 

 tion of extracted lioney, and we consider it a 

 poor one at that. 



We do not say that meltose has no valuable 

 food qualities — we know nothing about that 

 part of it. What »e object to, is the claim 

 that the stuff is the" same as honey'' (bee- 



honey), " the real thing,'' etc. Also, the 

 attempt to prejudice the public against 

 genuine bee-honey, by claiming that it con- 

 tains injurious "germs, pollen, fragments of 

 flowers, dust, and other foreign matters," 

 deserves to lie severely condemned. No hon- 

 orable man or flrm would do that. 



It's a pretty safe thing to shun people who 

 claim they have "genuine honey" that was 

 produced " without bees !" 



Sugar for Bee-Feed.— For years a dif- 

 ference of opinion has prevailed as to the 

 best kind of sugar to use in feeding bees. 

 Those who are supposed to know tell us that 

 granulated sugar made from beets is identical 

 with that made from sugar-cane. But things 

 that are identical from a chemical standpoint 

 are not always the same, as witnessed by the 

 familiar instance of diamond and charcoal ; 

 and across the ocean it has been earnestly 

 insisted that sugar from beets was unfit for 

 bees, and that cane-sugar alone should be 

 used. If it were easy to be sure of getting 

 cane-sugar, the safe thing would be to use 

 that alone, Ijut one can not be sure of what 

 granulated sugar is made, and the amount of 

 beet-sugar is all the time on the increase. 

 Since we are in a manner forced to use what 

 is very likely to be beet-sugar, we may take 

 some comfort from the experience of Editor 

 Root, remembering that the proof of the pud- 

 ding is the eating. He says in Gleanings in 

 Bee-Culture : 



Personally I do not have any uneasy feeling 

 about the sugar (luestion. It is not proper 

 for us to boast; but for the last 10 or 13 years 

 we have used beet-sugar for feeding our bees; 

 and if any one can show a higher wintering 

 average than we — one who has used cane- 

 sugar — we should like to have him hold up 

 his hand. Our wintering losses very often do 

 not exceed 2 percent, and the verj- highest is 

 1.5 percent, I believe. This covers a period of 

 about '30 years. I suppose a fair average 

 would be between 3 and 4 percent. If Mr. 

 Morrison is correct, the beet-sugar is better 

 than cane. But my honest impression is 

 that, with either sugar, we shall get good 

 results. The trouble from sugar-fed colonies 

 is more because the syrup is fed too late or 

 too thick, and the bees do not have oppor- 

 tunity to ripen it. If it is fed during warm 

 weather, when they can tlv, half and half, 

 other things h.ing what they ought to be. I 

 would not give two cents to have the colonies 

 insured. 



^ 



A New Honey-Plant is announced 

 every now and then, and at different times 

 there has been a sounding of trumpets over 

 some new plant that was to be kept by the 

 acre and give wondrous yield, as, for instance, 

 the Simpson honey-plant, figwort, and Chap- 

 man honey-plant. Acres of ground were 

 planted with these, and at the instigation of 

 bee-men the Government made an appropria- 



