THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW, 



pull through a season of sickness of all, and 

 death to many, while a majority of the fail- 

 ures ascribed to poor queens may, in fact, 

 be only the effect of bad wintering upon the 

 health and fertility of the best of queens. 



Pasadena, Cal. October 5th, 18i)2. 



[Several authorities recommend occasion- 

 ally raising the temperature of the bee cellar 

 as spring approaches, and I have no doubt 

 that the removal of bees to a dry, warm, 

 pure atmosphere, as was done by friend Day- 

 ton, would be as beneficial as he says it 

 would, but, rather than be compelled to per- 

 form such a task, I would try so hard to have 

 the fooa of such a character and air of the 

 cellar so pure, warm and dry, that nt) tem- 

 porary removal would ever be necessary. — 

 Ed.] 



Raising Sugar Honey may be Honorable but 

 it Looks Like a LeSp in the Dark. 



0. C. MILLER. 



T AM inclined to the 

 1 opinion that the 

 great majority of the 

 honey - consuming 

 public are of the be- 

 lief that it makes 

 very little difference 

 as to the source of 

 honey, only so that 

 it has undergone the 

 manipul-ition of the 

 bees. So dense is 

 their ignorance that 

 I have, more times than you would suppose, 

 been asked whether my bees were making 

 any honey while they were in the cellar. To 

 such persons it would make little difference, 

 in fact I think it would make no difference, 

 whether I told them the honey I offered for 

 sale was gathered from white clover or made 

 entirely from sugar which I had fed them. 

 A smaller and more discriminating class 

 have learned to believe that genuine honey 

 can only be obtained by the bees from the 

 flowers. That's one of the things we have to 

 deal with, the opinions of consumers. If all 

 were of the first class there would be little 

 difficulty in the direction indicated, so far as 

 prejudice of customers is concerned, and the 

 only thing to be considered on our part 

 would be the question, "Is it right? Is it 

 profitable ? " 



I must confess that I do no know enough 

 to answer. In a season when the flowers of- 

 fer a bounteous harvest,' it seems pretty clear 

 that it would not be profitable to stop their 

 working on that which costs nothing, (if in- 

 deed we could do so,) to fill up with that 

 which would cost us money. It is not so 

 clear, however, that it might not be a very 

 profitable thing, when nothing can be had 

 from natural sources, to provide a substi- 

 tute, provided we could have a permanently 

 continuous market at a sufficiently remuner- 

 ative price. 



As to the question, " Is it right ?" there is 

 greater difficulty in finding an answer. If 

 upon feeding the bees sugar we obtain a pro 

 duct that cannot be distinguished from the 

 best clover honey either by chemical analy- 

 sis, taste, or its effects on the human system, 

 why not use it instead, provided it can be 

 had at a lower rate ? Although some late 

 disclosures point somewhat in the direction 

 of showing that sugar-fed honey may be as 

 good as that obtained from flowers, I do 

 think we should be exceedingly cautious 

 about coming to a definite conclusion in that 

 regard, and I think there are not as yet suf- 

 ficient data to warrant us in accepting any 

 such conclusion as final. 



Even supposing it is fully settled that feed- 

 ing sugar makes good honest honey, will the 

 general effect be desirable ? There has been 

 so much said about adulterated honey that 

 quite a large sprinkling of the public have 

 been taught to believe that honey obtained 

 by feeding anything directly to the bees is 

 nothing more or less than adulterated hon- 

 ey. It will take some time to educate that 

 belief out of them. On the contrary, if we 

 should offer such a customer some sugar-fed 

 honey, and tell him it was just as good in 

 every way, and had been proved so by t^he 

 highe-;t authorities, it would only succeed in 

 making him feel a badly injured person, 

 and he would take pains to tell all his neigh- 

 bors of the injury, and make them wide 

 awake to the danger of being imposed on. 

 For in these things people go by their pre j- 

 udices more than by their senses. An intel- 

 ligent druggist once asked me to sell him 

 somejioney, as he wanted some that was 

 pure. I told him he could get some from a 

 grocer, a mutual friend, and being in the 

 comb he could rely on it. So strong was his 

 belief in the general adulteration of honey, 

 that instead of my assurance making him 

 satisfied, it only reemed to weaken his con- 



