THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



imitates it in color and taste that it is diffi- 

 cult to distinguish them. It may be just as 

 nourishing as butter but it is an imitatiou of 

 it and no one wants to buy it for butter. If 

 Mr. Hasty should try to sell his " sugar hon- 

 ey " to private customers as Idoai>art of 

 my honey, he would be likely to get iuio an 

 uncomfortable frame of mind for some one 

 ■would be likely to ask him what he was sell- 

 ing. He would not say hone\ , of course, 

 but '* sugar honey." His querist would no 

 doubt smile and want to know if he manu- 

 factured his hon. y. He would reply that he 

 had fed sugar syrup to his bees in such a 

 manner that they had made it into honey. 

 His querest would .-mile more than ever, and 

 then he (Hasty) would deliver a lecture on 

 how honey is made and how Ids sugar syrup 

 is " dige-ted " into honey just the same as 

 the nectar of flowers is. His querist would 

 no doubt admire his eloquence but would 

 continue to smile and would gooff doubt- 

 ing. How often he would have to do this no 

 one knows. But I fear he would be soon 

 set down as a humbug — something that I 

 hope he will be spared. Some people are 

 suspicious even of genuine honey and there 

 would be no end of trouble if " sugar hon- 

 ey " is introduced. I once met a man who 

 had the brazen impudence to ask if my hon- 

 ey was manufactured or not. He proved to 

 be a county superintendent of schools. This 

 was an outcropping of the " Wiley lie." 



The fallacy of Mr. Hasty's argument is 

 shown by the fact that while he claims that 

 his " sugar honey " is honey, he would sell it 

 only as sugar honej — using a qualified term. 

 If it is honey why not sell it without any 

 qualifying term whatever ? This cannot be 

 done without committing fraud for honey is 

 known to the trade and I suppos' d to every- 

 body else who knows anything about bees, 

 as a product of these insects derived from 

 flowers as I stated before. As a general 

 term it may be applied to any sweet or 

 pleasant substance, but Mr. Hasty does not 

 use it in this sense. Honey cannot he made 

 from sugar syrup any more than butter can 

 be made from certain fats and other ingre- 

 dients. The raw material for honey is dif- 

 ferent from sugar syrup. Nectar contains 

 cane sugar, but it contains also other ingre- 

 dients that gives to honey its distinctive 

 character, especially those that give it its 

 delicious flavor and delightful aroma. These 

 are anting in sugar syrup. Mr. Hasty con- 

 siders it a question of what does the work 



when it is just as much a question of mate- 

 rials. If his reasoning is correct then glu- 

 cose will produce glucose honey ; molasses, 

 molasses honey ; honey dew or plant lice 

 exudations, honey dew or plant lice exuda- 

 tion honey ; and if the bees should get at 

 the house-keeper's sweet-meats during her 

 absence, as they will if they get a chance, it 

 will give sweet-meat honey ; and I presume 

 that cider brought into the house from cider 

 mills, will give cider honey, too. Where is 

 this reasoning leading us to ? Surely to the 

 ridiculous. Yet it is the logical sequence of 

 Mr. Hasty's reasoning. If any one produces 

 this " sugar honey " let them be fair enough 

 to give their product a name so that it can- 

 not be confounded with true honey. If this 

 "sugar honey " is put on the market it will 

 soon be sold by unscrupulous per.-ons as 

 true honey, and the reputation of comb hon- 

 ey will go to the winds and it will be sold 

 under suspicion thereafter, and at a reduced 

 price. 



True honey is a natural product and is in 

 no sense an artificial one. It is the pure 

 nectar of flowers gathered by honey bees and 

 by them refined and cured into honey. It is 

 not "digested " nectar as some style it, for 

 digestion is the changing of food into chyle 

 or into a state to be assimilated by organ- 

 isms. Thus water and carbonic acid diges- 

 ted in plant cells produce vegetable fiber, 

 <tc. Animal and vegetable food digested in 

 animal organs produce blood and nourish 

 and give force to animal systems. The 

 changes produced in nectar by the secre- 

 tions of the houey bee are for the purpose of 

 preserving it. There is no doubt that if 

 these secretions were not added fermenta- 

 tion would take place and its value as a food 

 would be destroyed. Th- y cause certain 

 changes to take place in the nectar and 

 doubtless act as antiseptic and probably ren- 

 der it nion- nutritious and [ alatable. Ti ese 

 changes are not digestion in the ordinary 

 sense as the believers in this theory use it. 

 The first step in the digestion of starch is to 

 change it to sugar, but no one calls the mak- 

 ing of glucose by the action of sulphuric 

 acid on starch, digestion ; neither does any 

 one call the curdling of milk by rennet as is 

 done in cheese making, digestion, although 

 curdling is the first stage of the digestion of 

 milk. 



The moral of all this is : call things by 

 their right name, and I think our vocabula- 

 ry of apicultural names badly needs revising 



