1896. 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



837 



tant to have on the label at least a few words, but not very 

 many, for they won't read it. It might read thus: " If this 

 honey granulates, rellquefy by heating slowly ; don't boil or 

 overheat." 



Dr. Miller— If I lived in Cincinnati, I think I would put 

 granulated honey ou the market. 



Mr. Green — The only time I have ever tried to sell ex- 

 tracted honey to the consumer, it was all candied, and I had 

 very little trouble in disposing of it. When you sell to a gro- 

 cery store it ought to be liquefied. The difliculty of keep- 

 ing it liquefied is the objection to melting candied honey, and 

 if it gets to the consumer it may produce a worse effect than 

 If they bought it candied. 



Mr. Lyman — Those who buy candied honey never find any 

 fault with it afterwards, but I find that groceries have lots of 

 trouble, and unless it is exchanged, and kept in a liquid 

 state, there is a great deal of trouble in disposing of extracted 

 honey through grocers. 



Mr. Chapman — You will find in France, Switzerland, Ger- 

 many and Italy, it is sold in a candied state, but they are edu- 

 cated. Where you can sell candied honey in this country, it 

 will be to those people ; but the Americans have not that edu- 

 cation. 



Dr. Miller — That is just exactly the point. They are edu- 

 cated there. Mr. Muthhas for years been educating the peo- 

 ple in Cincinnati. They will buy the candied honey and won't 

 buytbeother. It took him some time to teach them. He has 

 his customers trained to that, and they understand it. How- 

 ever, suppose that it is possible for me, in my locality, to train 

 them to expect the candied honey, if it is heated over again by 

 the ordinary customer, the chances are nine out of ten they 

 will spoil it in the melting of it. It must be very carefully 

 done, and if overheated it is hurt by it; so, even if you have 

 it on your labels that they must melt it up, you can take it 

 back and exchange it. The only point is, you can exchange, 

 and keep the nice article on the market all the time. 



Mr. Green— If honey has been melted several times it will 

 often candy so as to be half liquid and half solid. 



Dr. Miller — That suggests a point that possibly might be 

 worth while mentioning. How many of you ever tried drain- 

 ing off honey ? For instance, here is a large crock of honey ; 

 sometimes it will candy all solid, and leave a little liquid part 

 above it ; how many have tried pouring that off? [Three.] 

 What was the result? 



Mr. Lyman — -I had a pretty good quality of honey-sugar 

 left. 



Dr. Miller--If you want something for your own use, to 

 put on the table, let it candy and pour off that liquid and melt 

 the remainder, and you'll make quite an improvement. 



Mr. Ellis — Then what is the liquid ? 



Dr. Miller — I don't know. The liquid part is inclined to 

 sour. 



Mr. Chapman — Chemically, honey is composed of two 

 sweets, one less sweet than the other, and the liquid contains 

 the least sweet part and the acid. 



Mr. Green — I always supposed this liquid part contained 

 more glucose than any part. 



Mr. Ellis — Isn't it just about along the line with rock 

 candy — the part of the liquid that will crystallize? All the 

 rest will not, and has to be used for cheaper grades. That's 

 what I learned down on Michigan Avenue, where they handle 

 such goods. 



Dr. Miller — Whatever the theory may be, you try it, and 

 you will have a very nice article of honey. Now, do you know 

 any objection to that ? There is one objection. It will candy 

 back again. You have to keep melting it. 



Mr. Ellis — How soon ? A week I presume. 



Dr. Miller — I guess if it is freezing, it will commence to 

 candy in a week. Suppose you want to send honey away. 

 Here is a friend that is visiting you from 500 or a 1000 miles 

 away, and you would like very much to have him take some 

 honey home. Take that, and have him take it home, and he 

 can carry it exactly as he would sugar. Suppose you have 

 taken a crock and drained it for a number of days, until thor- 

 oughly drained out, there will be nothing but what can be 

 taken in a trunk among clothes. 



PREVENTING OR DELAYING HONEY GRANULATION. 



Ques. 10. — What can be done to prevent or delay granula- 

 tion of honey put upon the retail market ? 



Dr. Miller — I should say, nothing that we want to do. If 

 you want to modify that answer, you can do so. 



Mr. York — Hasn't it been suggested that honey be heated, 

 and then sealed, to delay the granulation ? 



Dr. Miller — Even with that in view, I should keep my an- 

 swer the same, because I don't believe you can heat honey and 

 put up enough without running so great a risk in spoiling the 



honey, that it would not pay. You must heat it to about what 

 degree of heat ? 



Mr. York — 160, I believe. 



Dr. Miller — I am not sure that 160^ would keep it from 

 granulating. 



Mr. Lyman — Where honey is put up in bottles, would put- 

 ting sealing-wax on top keep it from granulating ? 



Dr. Miller — I think it would help a very little, because 

 that would keep it away from the air that much. It certainly 

 would help some, but I don't think it would help such a great 

 deal. I don't know. 



Mr. York — Doesn't light have something to do with honey 

 granulation ? 



Dr. Miller — I suppose it does. There might be something 

 in keeping dark paper around it, if that would not be objec- 

 tionable. 



Mr. Ellis — You often see on labels, " Keep in a cool, dark 

 place." 



Mr. York — It isn't necessary to keep it in a cool place. 



Mr. Ellis — I don't know. 



Mr. York — I know one grocer who had some comb honey 

 that he kept in an ice-box ; he said if he didn't, it would leak 

 and run all over everything 1 My wife tried to teach him diff- 

 erently, but he wouldn't listen to her. 



Dr. Miller — Here is a point that comes in, the point of 

 temperature. At what temperature will honey keep best from 

 granulating ? 



Mr. Green — I don't know. I should think it would have 

 to be over 80-'. 



Dr. Miller — What is the best temperature at which to keep 

 extracted honey, or any honey ? 



Mr. Ellis — According to that, it is keeping it where it 

 would be melting all the time. That is pretty near the tem- 

 perature that would liquefy it. 



Mr. Green — I have known it to granulate when the aver- 

 age temperature was not below 80-^. 



Mr. York — Of course, it is a well known fact that nearly 

 all honey will granulate, but willow herb-honey will remain 

 liquid for several months. I have had alfalfa honey to gran- 

 ulate solid in two weeks, in bottles. 



Mr. Ellis — I didn't see any granulated honey in the month 

 of May in New Mexico, and I had honey almost every day. 

 The man I stayed with, bought it in five gallon cans from the 

 man who produced it. He had his 200 colonies of bees, and 

 said he never had seen any granulated honey. The alfalfa I 

 had, came from Colorado, and it is very different. I think that 

 Arizona and New Mexico honey is mixed more with cleome. 



Dr. Miller — What is the best temperature at which to keep 

 comb honey ? I suppose what applies to extracted, would also 

 apply to comb. 



Mr. Baldwin — For what object ? 



Mr. Miller — For any object. 



Mr. Green — I should prefer to keep comb honey at 100'^. 



Mr. Baldwin — The hotter it is, if not too hot to melt it, 

 the better ; you cannot keep the temperature even. 



Dr. Miller For instance, in my house, here is one room 

 warmer than the other. 



Mr. Baldwin — I should prefer the warm room. 



Mr. Ellis— I ought to have added that the temperature 

 was from 65^ to 9.o- to 105 all the time I was in the south- 

 west. 



Dr. Miller — That might have something to do with it. 

 The British Bee Journal very lately said the best temperature 

 was in the neighborhood of 70° or T5°, not higher nor lower 

 than that. 



Mr. Green — When I was making more of a bu siness of 

 comb honey, I had such a room a very little larger than would 

 hold the honey, and I put in a large lamp or oil-stove, and it 

 kept that room up to lOO^ at least. 1 consider it very much 

 of an improvement on the quality of the honey. 



Dr. Miller — In that connection there is a point that I be- 

 lieve we should not lose sight of. If we have our honey ex- 

 posed for a suificient length of heat, that produces something 

 I might call a permanent effect on honey. Years ago, I was 

 in the habit of sending every year to my good old mother — 

 who is now in Heaven — a package of honey, to Johnstown, Pa. 

 One time when I was home, she said to me, "You n eedn't send 

 me any honey this year. I have enough of that you sent me 

 last year, and it is nice now." I was interested then to know 

 whether she knew nice honey, and I asked her where she kept 

 it, and she said up in the garret. I went up to see it, and it 

 was next to the roof. Some of you know what the close gar- 

 rets are, where there is no outlet, and in the winter time it is 

 as cold as Greenland ; but it had gone through that intense 

 heat, and it was thick and ropy, and it got hard, it did not 

 know enough to candy. I saw afterwards, and Mr. Kennedy 

 saw at a meeting of a bee-association of which he is Secre- 



