370 



December, 1911 



American ^ae Journal] 



at a sufficient distance above to free the 

 hives of any contact. Rough beams, 

 covered with boards, and straw or even 

 dry weeds or rushes will give all the 

 protection needed before piling on the 

 earth. 



I call to mind an old Belgian friend, 

 living in Mille Lacs Co., Minn., who 

 had a permanent silo large enough to 

 contain 120 hives, with ante-chamber, 

 all made of earth, logs, rough boards 

 and straw, and asserted with pride that 

 he had never lost a colony of bees in 

 that silo. He had ideal conditions, 

 however — a hillside of gravelly soil, 

 exceedingly well drained, large hives, 

 and an almost unfailing harvest of 

 white clover honey every summer. 



We can not count on uniform suc- 

 cess. There are reverses to all lines of 

 industry. But the man who takes cog- 

 nizance of all the requirements, uses 

 the experience of others, and to this 

 adds his own careful, practical tests, is 

 sure to make a success in the long run. 

 The younger generation is bound to 

 succeed better than its predecessors; 

 but to do this it must learn and discuss 

 the result of the experience already ac- 

 quired by the latter. It is the added 

 knowledge of the centuries which 

 makes our sons more capable than 

 their fathers, for experience is a dear 

 school. 



Hamilton, 111. 



Composition and Occurrence of 

 Honey 



BY WILLI.^M C. POOLE. 



Honey consists chiefly of invert su- 

 gar, water, and a trace of formic acid 

 which the honey-bee uses as a preser- 

 vative. When there are found large 

 percentages of glucose in the honey it 

 is due to the bees being fed with glu- 

 cose, or obtained it from some fruit in 

 the decaying stage, or possibly from 

 some manufacturing concern which 

 uses glucose in its manufacturing. 



A sample of honey from my apiary 

 which I analyzed, was found to con- 

 tain an average of the ingredients 

 which was found in the analysis of sev- 

 eral samples of standard honey. The 

 following is the analysis of my honey, 

 and the analyses of honeys which were 

 considered good, and also adulterated 

 honey with cane-sugar and glucose, 

 taken from " Leach on Food Inspec- 

 tion," which, I think, will be of interest 

 to bee-keepers : 



HoNEV OF W. H. Poole & Son. 



Direct polarization -o.i 



Invert sugar 6Q.40 % 



Water 18.00 % 



Ash w% 



Average Anai,vsis of Several Samples 

 OF Good Honey. 



Direct polarization -2.4 to-io.o 



Invert sugar 60 37 " 78.8 % 



Water 12 00 " 33.00% 



Ash 0.03" 0.50% 



Honey Adulterated with Cane-Sugar. 



Direct polarization 34.0 to 1.2 



Invert sugar 42.48 " 67. 2 % 



Water 42.42 " 15.56 % 



Ash " 0.06% 



Honey Adulterated with Commercial 

 Glucose 



Direct polarization... 147.0 to 101.5 



Invert sugar 46.18" 4987% 



Water is.io " 23.70% 



Ash 0.03" % 



Honey is a saccharine product de- 

 posited by the bee in the cells of 

 honey-comb, which the insect forms 

 out of wax secreted by its body. Honey 

 has its source chiefly in the nectars of 

 flowers, from which the bees abstract 

 it. The juices of ripe fruits and the 

 saps of trees furnish honey. During 

 the secretion of the honey in the body 

 of the bee the sucrose which forms the 

 chief constituent of fruit-juice or nec- 

 tar becomes, for the most part, inverted, 

 forming in the honey dextrose and 

 levulose. 



The flavor of honey varies consider- 

 ably according to its source. Besides 

 water, the sugars and mineral matters, 

 pollen is usually present, derived from 

 the flowers ; also, as a rule, a small 

 quantity of wax, and nearly always ap- 

 preciable amounts of various organic 

 acids, such as formic. 



In the above, of course, is not men- 

 tioned the coloring-matter in honey, 

 which is due to the organic coloring- 

 matter in the flowers from which the 

 bee gathers the honey. Honey grades 

 in color from a white produced from 

 clover, to a black produced from buck- 

 wheat, with the wild flowers coming in 

 between with an amber color. 



44 Maple St., Yonkers, N. Y. 



[Mr. Poole will analyze any sample 

 of honey sent him by a subscriber of 

 the American Bee Journal, if accom- 

 panied with 50 cents. — Editor.] 



Foul Brood— Bacterial Action 



BY A. W. SMYTH, M. D. 



We speak of bacteria as causing dis- 

 eases ; then, again, as preventing dis- 

 eases, and sometimes as curing dis- 

 eases. These opposite and apparently 

 irreconcilable properties in objects 

 that can only be seen in a microscope, 

 have caused the bacteria to be looked 

 upon as mythical bodies by many in- 

 telligeht persons who have not made 

 them a special study. In explanation 

 of the ways in which bacteria act, I pro- 

 pose adopting a method frequently 

 used by lawyers in court, ;'. e., of stat- 

 ing a case ; and I present the case of a 

 boy learning to smoke. 



If a boy takes .5 or li whiffs of smoke 

 from a tobacco-pipe, he will, in 3 or 4 

 mimutes, turn pale and have to lie down. 

 He will be a very sick boy for half-an- 

 hour, when he will begin to recover, 

 and in an hour he will be nearly well 

 again. The nicotine poison acts 

 quickly, and only for a short time. If 

 the boy had taken one whiff the first 

 day, 2 the second, and 3 the third, he 

 could have gone on for a month, and 

 without being sick, have made himself 

 an educated smoker — likely enough 

 proud of his accomplishment! Men 

 and women have educated themselves 

 to take with impunity a dose of opium 

 or morphine sufficient to kill a dozen 

 persons, and men have been known to 

 take, without any immediate ill effects, 

 a quantity of arsenic sufficient to kill a 

 score of men. They commenced by 

 taking small quantities. 



We will now suppose that there are 

 bacteria which secrete nicotine poison 

 as their weapon in the battle of life. 

 The poisons secreted by the bacteria 



are very similar to the poisons formed 

 in the leaves and flowers of plants, and 

 in the bark of trees, to protect them 

 from their enemies, so that the nico- 

 tine bacteria are not impossible bac- 

 teria — they may exist. If the smoking 

 boy and another boy not educated to 

 smoke should happen to be infected 

 with these bacteria at the same time, 

 no effects would be noticeable for sev- 

 eral days — the period of incubation, 

 say 10 days, when the bacteria would 

 begin producing nicotine. The smok- 

 ing boy would not be aft'ected by it, 

 while the other boy would be killed 

 very quickly — probably in an hour. 

 Now, if we had taken this boy before 

 he died, taken him on the day he was 

 infected, or the day after, and had 

 given him a whiff of tobacco-smoke, 

 the next day two, and so on, until the 

 bacteria commenced secreting nicotine, 

 he might have been sick from the 

 larger dose, but he would have recov- 

 ered to find himself as accomplished a 

 smoker as the other boy, the bacteria 

 having completed his education. 



We would have saved the boy pre- 

 cisely in the same way as a person bit- 

 ten by a rabid dog is saved in the Pas- 

 teur Institution, and the smoking boy's 

 protection from the nicotine bacteria 

 shows how immunity from smallpox, 

 by vaccination, may be produced at 

 will. It should be observed that it 

 makes no difference whether we use 

 the poison of the bacteria or the bac- 

 teria themselves, weakened by growing 

 in a cow, or by over-heating, or by 

 merely drying — as Pasteur did the 

 rabid dogs' virus to protect against 

 the disease — the result is the same. It 

 is the poisons of the bacteria that 

 cause and protect against the disease. 

 Our control over diseases, however, 

 is very much limited by the great, and, 

 I might say, insurmountable difficulties 

 that have to be overcome in isolating 

 the bacteria, and cultivating them so 

 as to obtain their poison. The poisons 

 can, as we have seen, protect against 

 the Scute infectious diseases caused by 

 the bacteria, but when the disease has 

 set in, the poison can not be used as a 

 remedial agent in the disease. Anti- 

 toxins are then used in a few diseases 

 with some advantage. 



Bacteria, although vegetable organ- 

 isms, live like bees in colonies, and the 

 individuals act in the interest of the 

 colony. It is numbers that make them 

 formidable. If a bee stings it dies, and 

 if a bacterium secretes poison it dies 

 in secreting it. Both lose their lives 

 in defence of the colony. A bacterium 

 can multiply, and as a bee sometimes 

 tries to multiply, but fails. The bacte- 

 ria grow and multiply for some time 

 before they commence secreting poison, 

 and this explains the nearly uniform 

 periods of incubation connected with 

 most infectious diseases. The incuba- 

 tion period of hydrophobia varies to a 

 great extent. 



The nicotine bacteria did not grow 

 in the smoking boy. Bacteria will not 

 grow unless the surrounding condi- 

 tions are favorable. Parasitic fungi 

 will not grow in strong and healthy 

 plants, but will readily in weak plants, 

 and the tubercle bacilli will not grow 

 in strong animals, but will readily in 

 the weak. When the bacteria are un- 

 able to poison and paralyze the anima 



