(Entered as second-clasa matter Jaly 30, 1907, at the Post-Offlce at Ohioago, 111., under Act of Marcb 3, 1879.) 



Published Monthly at $1.00 a Year, by George W. York & Company, 117 North Jefferson Street, 



GEORGE W. YORK. Editor. 



DR. C. C. MILLER. Associate Editor. 



CHICAGO, ILL, MARCH, 1912 



Vol. LII -No. 3 



How Sweet is Houey? 



How does it compare with granulated 

 sugar in sweetness ? In cookery, how 

 much honey should be used to sweeten 

 as much as a given amount of sugar? 

 Some say less honey than sugar is 

 needed in cooking, but perhaps the 

 majority say that more than a pound 

 of honey must be used in place of a 

 pound of sugar. 



In order to have something definite 

 and authoritative, the question was sub- 

 mitted to Dr. H. VV. Wiley, the United 

 States Government chemist — the man 

 who has done so much in the interest 

 of pure food, and who is loved for the 

 enemies he has made. Here is the re- 

 ply : 



A comparison of sweetness of two dissimi- 

 lar products is mostly a question of individ- 

 ual taste. The sui:ars present in honey are 

 dextrose and levulose. which are the inver- 

 sion products of sucrose. The sugar present 

 in ordinary white sugar is sucrose. There 

 are claims made by many that this mixture 

 of dextrose and levulose is sweeter than 

 sucrose while others offer the reverse view. 

 Honey, besides having the sweetening prop- 

 erties of sugar, has a characteristic taste 

 obtained from the flowers on which the bees 

 have fed. So. from this, it would be hard to 

 say which is the sweeter, and how much 

 sweeter. Respectfully. 



H. W. Wiley. CAief. 



And there you are. It seems, how- 

 ever, that we hardly need to give up 

 the problem without some eflfort to 

 solve it. Suppose a cake or other pro- 

 duct of the culinary art be prepared 

 with a given weight of sugar in it). Now 

 make another exactly like the first in 

 every respect except that instead of the 

 sugar the same weight of honey be 

 used. Now let some one supposed to 

 be possessed of normal taste, blind- 

 folded if you like, be allowed to taste 

 each one a number of times without 

 knowing which one he was tasting. If 

 he uniformly says that the same one is 

 sweeter each time, it will be pretty well 

 settled that that particular one is 

 sweeter than the other — at least to him. 

 Then if the same test be made with a 



number of other persons, including 

 persons of different tastes, if there is 

 entire agreement, the question may be 

 fairly settled whether a pound of sugar 

 or a pound of honey will go the farther 

 in cooking. If there is no such agree- 

 ment, then the failure of solution must 

 be charged up to differences of tastes, 

 for which the old saw says there is no 

 accounting. 



If there is a decided difference one 

 way or the other, continuous experi- 

 menting ought to bring out a fairly 

 definite answer to the question, " How 

 much honey is equivalent to a pound 

 of granulated sugar in cooking ?" 



Statistics of Bees In United States 



The enumeration of bees in the 

 United States' Census of 1910, is not 

 very satisfying, since it gives only the 

 bees on farms, omitting those kept in 

 towns and cities. Even so it is not 

 without interest. Compared with 1900, 

 there is a falling ofT in the number of 

 farms reporting bees, and also in the 

 number of colonies. On the other 

 hand, there is an increase in the val- 

 uation. 



The number of farms in the United 

 States reporting bees were— in 1900, 

 707,315; in 1910, 590,907— a decrease of 

 116,408, or a loss of 16K percent. 



Number of colonies in 1900,4,2.58,239; 

 in 1910, 3,462,.520— a decrease of 795,719, 

 or 18.7 percent. 



Here are 5 States with the percent of 

 decrease from 1900 to 1910: 



.Alabama .^4 



Tennessee 3b 



Texas 315 



Ohio 35 



Delaware 37 



There were 16 States having an in- 

 crease of colonies. The following are 

 given with an exceptionally large per- 

 cent of increase : 



Nevada 48 California 55 



New Mexico 63 N.Dakota 77 



Dist. Columbia. 155 S. Dakota 218 



Montana 2So Wyoming ,150 



Plainly a colony of bees was consid 

 ered of more value in 1910 than in 1900' 

 for notwithstanding the decrease in 

 numbers the total valuation increased 

 from $10,179,839 in 1900, to $10,372,976 

 in 1910. The average value of a colony 

 in 1900 was $2.39, increasing to $3.00 in 

 1910. 



A great variation occurs as to the 

 value in different States. Some of the 

 highestand lowest in 1910are : Georgia, 

 $1.43; Alabama, $1.58; Montana, $.5.09 ; 

 District of Columbia, $.5.23; Maine, 

 $.5.32; Massachusetts, $.5.32; Nevada, 

 $5.77 ; North Dakota, $6.23. 



Notwithstanding the fact that the de- 

 crease in number of colonies has been 

 greater in Texas than in any other 

 State, Texas still holds the distinction 

 of having a larger number of colonies 

 than any other State, with its 238,107 

 colonies. Two other States have to 

 their credit more than 200,000 each — 

 Missouri, 203,.560, and California,200,718. 

 Then there is a drop to 188,998, cred- 

 ited to North Carolina : 



In 5 States the bees are valued at 

 more than $500,000. They are : 



Ca 1 i f or n ia . . S728.000 Texas $675,000 



New York.. 647.000 Missouri 585,000 



Iowa 517.300 



Is there anything in these figures to 

 help answer the question: Which is 

 the best honey-State ? A State with 

 good pasturage for bees is likely to 

 attract more bee-keepers than one with 

 poor pasturage, and so to contain more 

 bees. So, other things being equal, 

 the State with more bees is the better 

 honey - State. But if pasturage be 

 equally good in two States, and one 

 State twice as large as the other, the 

 larger State will pretty surely have the 

 larger number of colonies. So size 

 must be taken into consideration. Per- 

 haps we may approach what we are 

 trying to reach by finding out the 

 number of colonies in a given area in 

 each State. At any rate, it will do no 

 harm to classify the States in that way. 



Instead of learning the number of 

 colonies to the square mile in each 

 State, suppose we plant apiaries all over 

 each State, placing the apiaries a trifle 

 more than 3 miles apart, thus allowing 

 10 square miles to each apiary, and 

 then find out the number of colonies in 

 each apiary. The State with the larg- 

 est number of colonies in each apiary 



