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AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



Or. J. H. Kellog:s:, of Battle 

 Creek, Micb., has made some very 

 startling blunders relative to bees and 

 honey. During the past ten years the 

 American Bee Journal has had to 

 correct him several times. He evidently 

 is too busy to investigate for himself, 

 and is thus often drawn into indorsing 

 the very stupid misstatements of others. 

 In Oleani7i(js for the 1st of April we 

 find the following concerning his latest 

 blundering and narrow-minded asser- 

 tions : 



The following, from Dr. Kellogg, is 

 clipped from a newspaper, and sent us 

 by one of our correspondents : 



"Honey, in its best estate, is not a pure 

 sweet, and consequently is open to 

 greater objections than free sugar. The 

 bees are not very nice in their habits, 

 and gather their stores in all sorts of 

 places, sometimes hovering over that 

 which is very loathsome and unclean. 

 In gathering the nectar from flowers, 

 the bee rubs off more or less of the pollen 

 and carries it home with him and de- 

 posits it with the honey. If the pollen 

 happens to be poisonous, the honey is 

 poisoned. At Trebizond, Turkey, poison- 

 ous flowers abound so that the honey at 

 that point is always poisonous. Further, 

 the bee always puts in a certain quantity 

 of poison from the poison-bag, formic 

 acid, to preserve the honey. If the bees 

 are very much disturbed while at their 

 work, they inject an unusual amount of 

 this formic acid into their product, and 

 so the honey becomes 'rank.' A per- 

 wn who eats ' rank ' honey will be taken 

 sick, and likely break out with a rash 

 similar to nettlerash, formic acid being 

 the poison in both instances. These 

 facts have all been determined by scien- 

 tific investigations." 



We have great respect for Dr. Kellogg; 

 but, like other great men, he has made 

 some bad blunders. And, by the way, 

 " big doctors," it seems to me, are too apt 

 to make positive assertions in regard to 

 things a little outside of their field, that 

 are only mere conjecture. His expres- 

 sion, " Bees are not very nice in their 

 habits," may be true in a narrow sense; 

 but the statement is mostly misleading 

 as it stands, as any one conversant with 

 honey-bees knows. 



Again, he says, "If the pollen happens 

 to be poisonous, the honey is poisoned." 

 This reminds us of the fearful blunder 

 made by the health commissioners of 

 New York city last season in condemn- 



ing grapes. They did see a little 

 poison on the stems of the grapes, very 

 likely ; but in order to do any harm, a 

 man would need to eat a ton of grapes 

 at a meal, stems and all ; and even then 

 it is doubtful whether the quantity of 

 posion he received would prove fatal. 



The honey at Trebizond, Turkey, is 

 " always poisonous," is it ? Perhaps 

 we can find out something more about 

 that. If there is anybody who has ever 

 been near that locality, I would kindly 

 ask him to give the address of some 

 proper person, and have the matter in- 

 vestigated. Such a newspaper state- 

 ment would be damaging to the " real- 

 estate prospects " of that locality. We 

 would respectfully call the attention of 

 the Sublime Porte of Turkey to the 

 above slanderous statements in regard 

 to his dominion. 



Another thing. Does the honey-bee 

 nlways put formic acid in the honey ? 

 Will Prof. Cook please tell us about 

 these things that come within his 

 domain ? 



Some writer, if I am correct, once 

 suggested that the operation of extract- 

 ing honey stirs the bees up to such an 

 extent that they inject bee-sting poison 

 into the honey, and this is why ex- 

 tracted-honey is more likely to make 

 people sick than comb-honey. The 

 writer was probably working for comb- 

 honey, and felt anxious that the great 

 public should give comb-honey the pref- 

 erence— i. e., pay a bigger price for it. 



Then, again, "The person who eats 

 rank honey will be taken sick." This 

 is another of the positive assertions ; 

 and yet we have readers who eat raw 

 honey about as friend Terry and I eat 

 strawberries, and it does not make them 

 sick. The rest of the sentence would 

 indicate that, whenever any of you 

 break out with a rash, all you have to 

 do is to think back when you last ate 

 some honey. 



Of course it is undisputed that " pois- 

 oned honey " was found in Trebizond, 

 for history proves it. There is also 

 some in America, which comes from the 

 mountain laurel ; but it is only the 

 " drop " compared to the ocean ! 



We hope that Prof. Cook, or some 

 other competent authority, will deal out 

 full measure of truth in answer to the 

 Doctor's wholesale assertions and slan- 

 ders about the formic acid in honey. 



That honey is one of the most potent 

 medicines has been acknowledged for 



