146 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTaRE. 



Feb. 15. 



the one who sits down to a table filled with 

 good things, we expect each reader to select 

 those things which are to his liking. I do not 

 expect, for instance, that the bee-keepers of 

 Florida will care for the subject of wintering, 

 neither do I expect the bee-keepers of Minnesota 

 or Vermont to be interested in how to gel rid of 

 a certain kind of ant and oilier pests that 

 trouble bee-keepers of the South. T5ut locality 

 does not altogether give iis a divi>ion of tastes. 

 One class of readers may be interested in every 

 thing that is said regarding California and its 

 phenomenal honey-yields. Another is anxious 

 to know all about the subject of large and 

 small hives. Another eagerly devours every 

 thing on greenhouses and gardening; and still 

 another, Home talks, and hints on health and 

 health-getting. What is my meat may be an- 

 other's poison. What may be "stuff" to me in 

 the way of reading-matter may be exceedingly 

 interesting and profitable to another. If one 

 does not like to wade through what to him is 

 " stuff." let him go over it (headlines) at a hop, 

 skip, and jump, and settle on that which he 

 does like. 



TAYLOR'S EXPERIMENTS IN HEATING HONEY. 



The following card came lo hand from our 

 friend R. L. Taylor, which will explain iit^elf: 



Friend E. B. R. :— Do you wonder that we get out 

 of patience with editors sometimes ? Well, I thiuk 

 you won't when you remember that at least twice 

 in Gleanings you have intimated Hint iny experi- 

 ment in heating- honey proved notliiiig i.rciuse there 

 was wax with il; when, if you h;id read my account 

 of it entire, you would have seen tliat the wax was 

 removed at 165°, when there was but a very slight 

 cliange In the honey. K. L. Taylor. 



Lapeer, Micli., Feb. 6. 



On receipt of this card I turned to the Decem- 

 ber issue of the Review, and I find that friend 

 Taylor does say this: "The heating process 

 then continued to be applied gradually to the 

 remaind(M' till its temperature reached 165 F., 

 when both honey and wax were melied, and a 

 sample of the honey was again taken after the 

 removal of the wax. The temperature contin- 

 ued lo be raised, and samples of the honey were 

 taken at temperatures of 185 and :.'00° Fahr." 

 To make sure that I made no mistake I re- 

 member of reading the latter part of the 

 article over three times; but I did not then 

 construe the sentence jusi quoted as it is inter- 

 preted in Mr. Taylor's carJ — certainly not as 

 applying to 185 and 300° F. I must have taken 

 it that a small sample of the wax and honey was 

 taken when it was raised to 165 degrees; that 

 on cooling, the wax was removed, and the hon- 

 ey lasled. It doesn't seem to me from the 

 quotation that it is clear that the wax had 

 been removed from that which had been raised 

 to 200° F. But I see that Mr. Taylor meant the 

 other way, and perhaps I was a little careless 



in construing the sentence as I did. At all 

 events, it is unfortunali-, I think, that the honey 

 tested i-liould have been comb honey, when it 

 would liave been so easy to get extracted. 



We make a business here of melting wax, ton 

 after ton of it every season, and know some- 

 thing about the effect of heat upon wax at 

 various temperatures. For a couple of years 

 we have been doing quite a little in the way of 

 melting up old discarded combs containing 

 honey in solar wax-extractors. In the large 

 Boardman, with a single glass, the tempera- 

 ture seldom rises much above the melting-point 

 of the wax; but we assume that it may rise to 

 165. All such honey, when taken out, has 

 quite a precepiible flavor of wax; but perhaps 

 Mr. Taylor will say this would prove nothing, 

 because his honey at 165 underwent but a very 

 slight change; but however slight it might be, 

 I should say it was due almost wholly to the 

 fact that the honey had incorporated some- 

 thing of the properties of the wax. These 

 properties would make themselves more dis- 

 agreeably manifest at higher temperatures. 

 Or, in other words, the properties of wax that 

 might have been incorporated in the honey at 

 165° F. — sufficient to have affected the honey 

 slightly — would, under a temperature of 200, 

 become quite pronounced, even assuming that 

 the bulk of the wax, or such as could be taken 

 out, had been removed at 165° F. 



Again, we note that honey has a wonderful 

 property of absorbing flavors from surrounding 

 bodies. We have to be careful what kind of 

 barrels we use, or else the extracted honey will 

 taste woody; and the bee-keepers of California 

 know to their sorrow that the square oil-cans, 

 even when thoroughly washed out with hot 

 soda and water, will impart to honey some of 

 the coal-oil flavor. Wax melts at 145; and 

 from that point up lo 165 it could impart to 

 honey heated with it a considerable of its prop- 

 erties in the way of flavor and coloring-matter. 

 This same flavor and coloring would be inten- 

 sified at higher temperatures. 



In view of what Mr. Taylor has said in his 

 card, I will not go so far this time as to say 

 that his experiments prove nothing; but I will 

 say that they would have been much more sat- 

 isfactory if he had used honey entirely free 

 from wax. I can not help feeling that the re- 

 sult would have been considerably different 

 had he used that. It is to be hoped that, in the 

 near future, as the experiment is so easily tried, 

 he will lest the thing again. Our own observa- 

 tion has satisfied us that extracted honey is not 

 injured when brought to a temperature of 180, 

 and then sealed in glass cans. Some of the fin- 

 est and best-flavored honey we ever had was 

 this very lot. 



1 grant, friend T., that editors are provoking. 

 Well, I want to offer a professional secret: Once 

 in a while we wish that we could re-write what 



