620 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Aug. 



FALSE STATEMENTS IN REGARD TO THE HON- 

 EY BUSINESS OF OUR COUNTRY. 



\s a protection to ourbee-keeping population, we propose in 

 tliis department to publish the names of newspapers that per- 

 sist in publishing false stat. incuts in regard to Hi.- purity of 

 honey which we as bee-keepers put on the market. 



HOW TO PREVENT THEIR PUBLICATION, AND HOW 

 TO CORRECT THEIR BANEFUL INFLUENCE ; 

 SOMETHING FOR OUR SUBSCRIBERS TO DO. 



TF there is any tiling that the veracious 

 M scribes like to talk about in the press, 

 W and roll under their tongues as a pre- 

 "* cious morsel, and iinally spit out upon 

 the public, it is the subject of adultera- 

 tion. They seem to have gone wild on the 

 subject. They know people like to be told 

 that they are "being humbugged; and they 

 know that the story of" Yankee ingenuity " 

 will cause the gullible public to hold up 

 their hands, "Did you ever !" and as long 

 as there is a demand for it, so long the same 

 old story will be rehashed, unless there is 

 a stop put to it. " Manufactured comb hon- 

 ey," " artificial combs deftly filled and cap- 

 ped over by means of appropriate machine- 

 ry " — oh dear ! how stale it sounds ! If the 

 reporters could only change their tune a lit- 

 tle it would be gratifying ; but " appropri- 

 ate machinery " has to be stuck in every 

 time. Well, within the last few weeks, or 

 at least since the Philadelphia Eecord com- 

 menced republishing the comb -honey story, 

 the whole press all over the land has been 

 reiterating it in long and short squibs. 

 Clipping after clipping has been sent in un- 

 til we feel discouraged. We have published 

 them, and refuted them publicly, and sent 

 marked articles to the editors, calling upon 

 them for retraction. We have written pri- 

 vate letters, asking them in all fairness to 

 be kind enough to make some amends. Nor 

 has Bro. Newman of the American Bee Jour- 

 nal been less vigilant. We have about come 

 to the conclusion that the bee-journals need 

 assistance in helping to cry down the evil. 

 Jones sees a false statement about the 

 comb-honey business in one of the columns 

 of his local paper. lie cuts it out, marking 

 the date and issue of the paper, and sends 

 the same on to us, or to Bro. Newman, of 

 the American Bee Journal. Well, so many 

 clippings like this have come in that it 

 would almost fill one issue to make any 

 thing like an appropriate denial for each 

 one. Quite recently some four or five cor- 

 respondents, instead of sending the marked 

 article to us for refutation, have themselves 

 called upon the editor, showing the absurdi- 

 ty of the statement in a recent issue of his 

 paper. In two or three instances they have 

 written out a refutation themselves, and 

 this refutation appears in the very next is- 

 sue of the paper, so that the false impres- 

 sion is corrected right where the mischief is 

 done, and not' in the columns of a bee-paper 

 whose readers know perfectly well the un- 

 truth. The following is a spicily written ar- 

 ticle from the pen of one of our subscribers, 

 Mr. Julius Gerard, of Mariposa, Texas ; and 

 as it illustrates the point we are getting at, 

 we reproduce it here entire : 



A PROFESSOR MISTAKEN. 



GLUCOSE AS ARTIFICIAL HONEY ; A PRACTICAL 

 BEE-KEEPER'S KNOWLEDGE OF THE FACTS. 



Editor Bracked News: — I suppose whenever you 

 want to get the real facts about any thing you re- 

 fer to your Encyclopedia Britannica; for instance, 

 if you wish to know how far it is from Bracket t to 

 the sun, you refer to the Encyclopedia; and what- 

 ever the given number of miles may be, you or any 

 one else will accept it as a fact. 1 am sorry to say, 

 however, that my confidence in the American En- 

 cyclopedia has been lowered 1U0 per cent, because I 

 see at least one instance in which hearsay is given 

 out as true science. 



Mr. Chas. Morris, of the Philadelphia Academy of 

 Science, writes concerning glucose, in Vol. III. of 

 American Supplement, page ">:J7, in the left-hand 

 column, 21st line from the top, as follows: 



"Glucose is used chieliy in the manufacture of 

 table syrups and confectionery, in the brewing of 

 ale and beer, and to some extent as food for bees 

 and in the making of artificial honey. No reliable 

 statistics can be had as to the quantity used in 

 brewing, since brewers seek to conceal the fact of 

 its employment. When it is fed to the bees, the 

 honey yielded by the bees is almost pure glucose. 

 In artificial-honey making, the comb is made of 

 paraffine, and filled with pure glucose by machine- 

 ry. For whiteness and beauty it rivals the best 

 white-clover honey, and it can be sold at less than 

 half the price. Tts one defect is, that it is not hon- 

 ey." 



Now, sir, this falsehood is given by a professor of 

 science, and published as a fact in the Encyclope- 

 dia Britannica, a work to which thousands of peo- 

 ple refer as authority. 



If the author of the article on glucose will take 

 the trouble to come out to the Mariposa apiary I 

 will convince him that his education as a bee-keep- 

 er has been sadly neglected, and that what he 

 wrote about artificial honey being made of glucose 

 and then put into artificial comb by machinery, is 

 false; and if he has taken no more pains in writing 

 the other parts of his work than he did in this, I 

 would not give a nickel for all the volumes of the 

 Encyclopedia Britannica. 



Mr. A. I. Root, of Medina, Ohio, offers a reward 

 of $1000 to any one who will show or tell him where 

 artificial comb honey is made; this offer was made 

 because so many false reports have been cast 

 abroad about honey. Mr. Root has not yet found 

 anybody who claimed the reward. 



If Professor Morris, the glucose gent, tells us 

 that the distance to a certain star is just 400,000 and 

 % of a mile, I for one am willing to swallow it, even 

 to a fraction of a mile. But when he wants to tell 

 me or any other progressive bee-keeper any thing 

 connected with our industry, he should be a little 

 more careful, as we never go by hearsay, but by 

 facts. That man is doing a hard-working class of 

 men a great injury. I can assure you, dear sir, that 

 there is no artificial comb honey made by machine- 

 ry, and that there never was any made. 



Mariposa Apiary. Julius Gerard. 



Another one of our subscribers, also sec- 

 retary of the Ohio State Bee-keepers' Asso- 

 ciation, Miss Dema Bennett, of Bedford, O., 

 who, after having read the usual yarn about 

 manufactured comb honey " deftly filled by 

 appropriate machinery," in a large Cleve- 

 land daily, called upon the city editor in 

 person, proving to him the falsity and ab- 

 surdity of the statement respecting manu- 

 factured comb honey, which appeared in a 

 recent issue of his paper. After telling him 

 that tons and tons of honey are produced 

 honestly, she referred him to us. As a re- 

 sult of this visit he wrote us a letter asking 

 for facts in regard to the honey business. 

 We immediately sent him a card, offering a 

 thousand dollars for a sample of manufac- 

 tured comb honey. " deftly filled by means 

 of appropriate machinery." We also wrote 

 him a long letter, detailing the importance 

 of the honey industry in the United States, 

 telling him where he could find out just 



