THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW, 



99 



There is a difference in all kinds of honey 

 as re<jards the quality, just the same as there 

 is a difference in butter. I can buy butter 

 here for twelve cents per pound, and there 

 are also butter makers here who sell every 

 pound they make for tweuty-five cents per 

 pound, and the twenty-tive cent kind is the 

 kind I prefer and have use for three times a 

 day. The fact is, the twelve cents a pound 

 is a high price for the twelve cent butter, 

 and twenty-five cents per pound for the 

 twenty-five cent butter is just fair. 



No one finds fault with paying a high price 

 for an excellent article, but. in finding due 

 fault with a poor article the price is not 

 usually considered. 



The longer granulated sugar honey is in 

 the comb the more it has of the oily, twangy, 

 honey taste. Anything less than absolutely 

 pure sugar is not so. Even coffee A. gets 

 poorer and poorer to a perceptable extent. 



I have experimented with a hundred or 

 more sections full of the light brown sugars, 

 which, at first, had a somewhat agreeable 

 taste ; but, after being worked over by the 

 bees and stored in the combs it lost every 

 vestage of good taste or flavor, and, instead 

 of improving as pure sugar does it became 

 worse aud worse. 



The trouble with these bee-keepers who 

 are making this great hubbub is that they 

 have not experimented and consequently do 

 not know what they are talking about, but, 

 like an enraged bee, think they should sting 

 some one. 



One season I sold 10,000 pounds of honey 

 from house to house, and hundreds of times 

 did I hear accusations against bee men of 

 their feeding their bees and adulterating 

 thfir honey, and I found that these accusa- 

 tions were not made without some cause. 

 One prevalent cause was that honey men 

 had been along selling a poor grade of dark 

 honey for a better quality than it was. In 

 twenty or thirty instances in the towns of 

 Calmar, (Jssian, Castalia and Postville, Iowa, 

 a honey man preceded me and sold a kind of 

 honey which was nearly white in the appear- 

 ance of the cappings. while the honey deiv 

 inside was a bluish black and had a decidedly 

 bitter taste. He sold this worthless trash for 

 twelve cents per pound where I sold bass- 

 wood at fourteen cents. These persons 

 bought the honey for a luxury, and it proved 

 to be disgusting. Such honey was not worth 

 four cents. It was not fit to offer. The fact 

 was he had experienced a honey failure that 

 season and either did not know it or else 



sought to make up the failure by cheeating 

 some one. In nearly every instance where 

 this honey was purchased I sold another 

 quantity of basswood honey. I found nearly 

 every one of those who purchased the poor 

 honey so sure that he had fed his bees upon 

 some vile mixture that it was entirely useless 

 for me to offer any arguments to the con- 

 trary. While he did not adulterate the honey 

 it amounted to a complete counterfeit that 

 would not pass worth a cent. A very poor 

 quality of honey was sold for a good quality. 

 There are as many grades of natural honey 

 as there are of butter or sugar. 



From numerous experiences of this kind I 

 have come to the belief that the Wiley lie is 

 only a text for the "clack" of the news- 

 papers, while the offering of poor kinds of 

 honey and poorly ripened honey has fed and 

 kept it alive, and every sale of poor honey 

 brings it to mind. 



The outcome may be seen, which is, if we 

 could blot out the Wiley lie entirely we would 

 gain the partial confidence of consumers 

 again, and taking advantage of this confi- 

 dence place larger quantities of green, bit- 

 ter, and shiftlessly produced honey on their 

 tables. 



My advice here is, to get the quality of 

 our honey iqj. Don't offer to sell any we 

 would not eat ourselves. 



The only advantage of squelching the fact 

 that pure sugar will produce a good, pure 

 and palatable luxury is, that poor grades of 

 floral honey may creep along in the guise of 

 purity and excellence under the name of 

 "honey," while customers are duped and 

 deceived therewith. It may truthfully be 

 claimed that it was " gathered and stored by 

 the bees " instead of by the bee keeper, 

 because people have more confidence in, 

 and more forbearance with Nature, instinct 

 or dumb animals than in him who pockets the 

 cash. The aim should be to please consumers 

 instead of getting rid of the honey crop. 

 Raise fewer tons which we may be prouder 

 of, that when we sell we may have a "whole 

 heart" instead of "half a heart," and when 

 making a sale we will not need to dodge such 

 fiings as the Wiley lie. The Wiley lie and 

 faulty grades of honey, (which every bee 

 keeper produces more or less of), stick to- 

 gether like little brothers, and a truly re- 

 spectable quality of honey is a giant in full 

 armor in comparison. 



Every producer should accompany his 

 honey farther than to the border of the 



