OR, MANUAL OF THE APIARY. 173 



Tf hat I feel sure were pure honey, to be probably adulterated. 

 I think that now he has perfected his methods so that such 

 mistakes would rarely occur. 



While nearly or quite half of the nectar of flowers is cane- 

 sugar, there is very little of such sugar in honey. While from 

 one to three percent is most common it not infrequently runs 

 to five or six percent, and occasionally to twelve or sixteen per- 

 cent. Quite likely in this last case, imperfect digestion was 

 the cause. The nectar was not long enough in the stomach to 

 be changed ; or else for some reason there was too little of the 

 digestive ferment present. Of course, twelve to fifteen percent 

 of sucrose would almost surely rotate the plane to the right. 

 There is a very interesting field for study here. What flowers 

 yield nectar so rich in cane-sugar that even the honey is rich 

 in the same element ? Honey often contains, we are told, as 

 much as four percent of dextrine. This, of course, tends to 

 make it rotate the ray to the right, and further complicates 

 the matter. Again, it is easy to see that in case flowers 

 secrete nectar in large quantities the bees would load quickly, 

 and so proportionately less saliva would be mixed with it, and 

 digestion would be less thorough. 



We see now why drones and queens need salivary glands 

 to yield the ferment to digest honey. Often the worker-bees 

 do not thoroughly digest it. We see, too, why honey is such 

 an excellent food. We have to digest all our cane-sugar. The 

 honey we eat has been largely digested for us. 



Albuminoids — evidently from the pollen — vary from five 

 to seventy-five hundredths of one percent. These vary largely 

 according to the flowers. It is quite likely that in case of 

 bloom like basswood where the honey comes very rapidly — 

 fifteen pounds per day sometimes for each colony — the stomach- 

 mouth can not remove all the pollen. Here is an opportunity 

 for close observation. If we know we have honey that was 

 gathered very rapidly, we should have a test made for albumi- 

 nous material to ^ee if its quantity increases with the rapidity 

 with which the honey is gathered. While there may be quite 

 an amount of this pollen in honey, usually there will be but 

 little. 



Besides the above substances, there is a little mineral mat- 



