March IS, 1900. 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



169 



cane-sugar are spread out over unleavened corn-bread. The 

 innocent bees feed upon this saccharine combination and 

 proceed to produce g-lucose honey, tho put up in reguhir 

 combs. The deception is complete, but the honey is about 

 as unlike the real article made from flowers as a wholly arti- 

 ficial imitation. Honey produced in this way is very cheap 

 as to cost of production, when it is considered that the bees 

 would otherwise be idle. The price of honey is also hig-her 

 in the winter than at other times. 



Major Bowler said yesterday that he had decided that 

 such honey was adulterated honey. He says, however, that 

 he will not prosecute the bees, considering- them as innocent 

 accomplices in a fraud which must be charged to their 

 owners. 



There will not be any difficulty in making prosecutions 

 so far as the law is concerned, for it defines pure honey to 

 be made by bees from plants. 



The bees consider this manner of making honey such a 

 snap that once they have been thoroly initiated they are of 

 no more use for honest toil in the fields. Their extractors 

 lose their cunning, and, remembering the luxurious afflu- 

 ence of winter, they refuse to buzz over the countryside 

 and take infinite pains to get a drop of honey. 



The above is a fair sample of what may be evolved out 

 of the brain of a wild-eyed reporter who is hard up for 

 something to fill space. And there will be plenty of people 

 to believe that a colony of bees can be got to spend the 

 whole winter making glucose honey out of maple and cane 

 sugar, and that fortunes can be made thereby. What next 

 will be started, and to what extent a strain maybe put upon 

 the gullibility of the public, it is hard to conjecture. Per- 

 haps something like the following imaginative tale may be 

 expected to go the rounds : 



A NOVEL INDUSTRY. 



THE BBBS' OCCUPATION AT AN END — A NEW FORCE IN 

 NATURE. 



In the parish of Alfalita, on the boundary line between 

 Georgia and Mississippi, just north of the lovely lake of 

 Atchaminoka, is an exquisite little valley, so hemmed in on 

 all sides by gently sloping hills that no hint of its existence 

 is seen till one comes suddenly upon it. In the center of 

 this beautiful valley rises an imposing structure, or rather 

 a series of imposing structures, with a grand central tower. 

 What transpires within these walls has been for genera- 

 tions a profound mystery. 



From time to time great hogsheads have been brought 

 in the dead of night on the little spur of railroad that shoots 

 out from the Great Southern and Inland railroad system, 

 and from time to time also such hogsheads have been seen 

 loading up on the cars run alongside one of the outside 

 walls, but well-armed guards have carefully prevented too 

 close scrutiny of the incoming or outgoing vessels. The 

 employees, whatever may have been their occupation, were 

 never seen outside the walls. At intervals some negro was 

 known to go inside, but what became of him afterwards, 

 whether buried inside at the end of his days, or spirited to 

 some other region, was never known. 



Ambitious reporters had tried, but tried in vain, to ob- 

 tain entrance. At length one of our most skillful investi- 

 gators, thanks to features not altogether unlike those of an 

 African, and to a proper application of burnt cork, made 

 successful application for employment. How he safelj' es- 

 caped, if safely it could be called, and how he managed to 

 get entire information as to all points, does not come with- 

 in the scope of the chronicles. The facts, in as few words 

 as possible, are sufficient. 



The contents of the hogsheads that make their noctur- 

 nal entrj' are nothing more nor less than the crude sap of 

 sugar-cane gathered from thousands of acres of growing 

 cane. Pneumatic pumps at various points in the outer cir- 

 cuit of buildings send a constant stream of the raw sap 

 toward the central building. In the very midst of this, to 

 which none but a select few of the most trusted employees 

 are admitted, stands a creation unlike anything to be seen 

 elsewhere in the whole wide world. And yet it is very like 

 what may be seen in any bee-hive, for it is simply an im- 

 mense bee, apparently endowed with every attribute of life. 

 Its wings are constantly in motion with a gentle fanning 

 action ; at intervals one after another of its six feet are 

 lifted and set down again, and the head sways alternately 

 from one side to another, as if investigating its surround- 

 ings. In color, form, proportion, there is really nothing to 

 distinguish it from one of a thousand of. the busy denizens 



of the hive, the only point of difference being its size. One 

 of its dimensions being given, it is easy for one familiar 

 with the form of a bee to estimate the others. From the 

 extreme limit of its antenna; to the tip of its tail is 117 feet ! 



Not less remarkable, indeed much more remarkable, is 

 the inner construction. All that is found inside a honey- 

 bee is here found, only on a colossal scale. The varioi)s 

 streams of the cane sap converge into one huge stream 

 which enters the mouth of the bee, or rather enters a large 

 aperture in its tongue, and out of another aperture nearer 

 the base of the tongue emerges the stream after having 

 ramified thru all the minute vessels of the great body. The 

 difference is that what made its entrance as crude sap 

 makes its exit as an excellent quality of the finest liquid 

 honey. One would naturally suppose that some cunningly 

 devised chemicals had produced the remarkable change. 

 Nothing of the kind. The entire establishment is innocent 

 of drugs of all kinds. 



A force in Nature is at work that has elsewhere escaped 

 observation. It is well known to scientists that a chemical 

 change may take place in some cases because of the pres- 

 ence of another material, this latter material remaining 

 itself unchanged. In the present case there seems to be a 

 change made not in any chemical way, but by some occult 

 power by which theyb/-;« of the huge bee so affects the life- 

 less liquid that the entering sap emerges as nectar fit for 

 the gods. 



In vain may scientists say no such force is impossible ; 

 there is the crude sap, there is the verisimilitude of a gigan- 

 tic bee, and there is the honey. Facts are stubborn things. 



In the light of what is here divulged, it need no longer 

 be a matter of wonder why liquid honey, or that which in 

 trade circles is called the extract of honey, is always sold at 

 a lower price than the genuine article made by the bees and 

 stored in honeycombs. 



And so we might go on " spinning yarns " about some- 

 thing that doesn't exist, similar to those ground out by the 

 average newspaper reporter. No doubt if the foregoing 

 piece of apiarian fiction appeared in the Chicago Record the 

 majority of its readers would not only half believe it, but 

 would soon tell it as a fact, and it would be a difficult mat- 

 ter to convince many of them that it was all a rattle-brain 

 story. 



But such are newspaper life and stories, and all bee- 

 keepers can do is to keep on trying to spread and uphold 

 the truth regardless of what others do or say. 



Tin and Wood Packages for Honey were discust in a 

 lively manner at the Wisconsin convention, the discussion 

 following our paper on "Honey — From the Hive to the 

 Table," which will appear in these columns later. The 

 points in the discussion are well summed up by W. Z. 

 Hutchinson, in the Country Gentleman, as follows: 



" For retailing honey, selling it to grocers, the jacketed 

 tin cans, two in a case, each can holding 60 pounds, possess 

 decided advantages. They seldom leak, unless carelessly 

 punctured by a nail when nailing on the jacket. If a can 

 does leak, or meet with an accident, the loss is slight com- 

 pared to what occurs when a barrel 'loses its head.' There 

 is no loss from ' soakage,' as is sometimes the case with 

 wooden packages. Honey in a can is easily liquefied. The 

 greatest objection to tin cans is their cost. A barrel hold- 

 ing 350 pounds of honey can be bought for 80 cents. The 

 same amount of honey put in tin cans would call for an ex- 

 penditure of about $2.25 for packages. In shipping a large 

 crop, this is a big item. 



" Barrels are more easily handled, as they can be rolled, 

 while cans must be lifted and carried, or else shoved. Manu- 

 facturers, and others using honey in large quantities, 

 usuallj' prefer it in barrels, as they have arrangements for 

 handling it to advantage in such packages, and they wish 

 to avoid the expense of tin packages. Care is needed in 

 securing the right kind of barrels — that they are made by a 

 man who understands his business. When it was proposed 

 to wax the barrels, the reply was : ' Wax your cooper in- 

 stead of the barrels.' However, the waxing of barrels, or 

 rather the coating of them on the inside with paraffin, is 

 worthy of consideration, if, as some asserted, a barrel will 

 absorb from five to ten pounds of honey, which must be lost 

 by the producer. A barrel can be coated on the inside with 

 paraffin at a cost of 10 cents — much less if there is any 

 way of heating the barrel." 



