212 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



Apr. 1 



GENERAL 

 CORRESPONDENCE 



LIQUEFYING CANDIED HONEY ON A 

 LARGE SCALE. 



Some Objections to the Solar Method of 

 Treating Honey to Prevent Granula- 

 tion. 



BY O. B. METCALFE. 



On p. 769, Dec. 15, Mr. H. R. Boardman de- 

 scribes his method of treating honey to the 

 sun's rays to prevent its granulating. Now 

 that some one .else has mentioned it I have 

 noted several times that honey heated bv 

 sunUght does not granulate quickly if at all. 

 Season before last we had some 25 cases of 

 honey in quart jars that candied before we 

 could sell it. As an experiment I melted up 

 some five or six cases of it in the sun ex- 

 tractor; and although several jars lay around 

 for months it never candied again. I took 

 notice of this fact, but thought it no doubt 

 due to its getting too hot, for it came out of 

 the sun extractor quite dark, and tasted 

 badly "cooked." 



Besides this experience, some five or six 

 1-lb. jars of candied extracted honey were 

 set out on the sunny side of one of our hon- 

 ey-houses last spring. The sun liquefied the 

 honey, and I remember that it remained so 

 until the time I left home in the fall, but that 

 also seemed to have been heated rather too 

 much. Now I want to know how much the 

 sun heats Mr. Boardman's honey, and how 

 long he exposes it to the sun. 



Tnere is, perhaps, no question which more 

 vitally concerns a New Mexico bee- keeper 

 than the granulation of honey, and no place 

 where bee-keepers could better give it the 

 sun treatment if proven effectual. 



C. W. Rever, in the same issue, p. 771, ex- 

 presses his hopes of a fireless heater which 

 will use the sun's heat for melting honey on 

 a large scale. I have given this matter con- 

 siderable thought, and have used the sun 

 extractor to melt up a great deal of candied 

 honey by emptying it mto the trays of the 

 extractors just as though it were cappings; 

 however, I always melt up just some odd 

 batch of honey in this way, such as a tub or 

 small settling-tank full which has candied 

 before it would settle or before we got it 

 drawn otT; and I did it with the understand- 

 ing that it would get too hot and turn too 

 dark to sell as No. 1. In tin cans the result 

 is even worse, for the melted honey can not 

 run down out of the sunlight; but the un- 

 melted chunk settles to the bottom, where it 

 keeps cool longest, while the melted portion, 

 which is already hot enough, is nearest the 

 sun's heat, and gets hotter and hotter. 



Heating by fire has the obvious advantage 

 that the Beat may be applied to a large bulk 

 for as long a period as it takes to do the 

 work, and at the bottom, where the unmelted 

 chunk rests; or the honey may be stirred to 



prevent its getting overheated in one place 

 while unmelted in another. 



One other point against melting honey in 

 the sun extractor, which I noted, was that it 

 would not quite all melt. A thin scale of 

 sugar, which resembled rock candy, would 

 settle to the bottom of the jar, and remain 

 so, no matter if I left it for several days, 

 while the slumgum in another part of the 

 same sun extractor would register over 212° 

 F. all through the hot part of the day. 



Right here I wish to advise any bee-keep- 

 er who attempts the melting of a 35,000-1d. 

 car of honey to make extensive preparations 

 first for doing so. A year ago last fall, with 

 my Mexican l)oy to help, I set about such a 

 task. The first thing I did was to get enough 

 galvanized iron to make a heater which 

 would hold 27 60-lb. cans of honey, and take 

 cordwood in the fire-box; and now as I think 

 over that experience I believe that still bet- 

 ter advice to my brother bee-keepers would 

 be, "Don't let as much as a carload of honey 

 candy on your hands unless you mean to 

 bottle it yourself or sell it granulated." A 

 carload of it candied hard is a big, cold, un- 

 relenting mass. 



THE CAUSE OF THE FINE SPECKS IN MR. 

 BYER'S HONEY; HOT WAX AND HONEY 

 SHOULD NOT BE STIRRED. 



I am wondering if Mr. Byer, p. 779, stirred 

 that honey in the capping melter. Season 

 before last we were so late with our last ex- 

 tracting that the sun extractors would not 

 melt the cappings; so I set to work to 

 handle them by artificial heat. I made a 

 heater which held 400 lbs., and dumped in the 

 cappings as fast as they melted up. That 

 worked well, for the next morning I had a 

 lot of clear but well-cooked honey in the bot- 

 tom; next a layer of slumgum, and on top a 

 nice cake of yellow wax; but the honey was 

 too dark and the process too slow, so I emp- 

 tied the heater, fired up again, and filled in 

 the cappings by the tubful; took a garden- 

 hoe, and, standing over the melter, stirred 

 all the time to keep the mass at an even 

 temperature, meanwhile adding more cap- 

 pings until the melter was full. I turned up 

 the gasoline flames under it, and stirred 

 constantly until the mixture reached about 

 160°F., then turned out the fires and left it 

 to settle. Next morning I expected, of 

 course, to have a fine cake of wax on top, a 

 layer of slumgum, and in the bottom some 

 good honey ; but to my surprise, there was, 

 mstead of wax on top, a light sticky spongy 

 substance. I drew oft" some honey from the 

 bottom; but instead of being clear and nice, 

 as I expected, it was cloudy; and upon close 

 examination it was found to have tiny par- 

 ticles of wax all through it, even at the very 

 bottom of the tank. I said to myself, "Well, 

 I'll have to strain you! " but this I could not 

 do, for it instantly clogged the strainer. 

 Then I heated it so it would run through the 

 strainer all right, and again left it to settle. 

 The next day I found the same proposition. 

 While hot, the wax, of course, went through 

 the strainer, as I had finally seen it was do- 

 ing the day before. I decided to give it 



