516 



THE SMERicsif mmm jqurnsiu. 



Comb-Honey Slanders. — It is no 



more the cliity of tlie editors than it is 

 of other bee-keepers, to refute the slan- 

 ■ ders of newspaper correspondents, and 

 otliers, about comb honey. All are 

 alike interested in circulating the 

 truth about our pursuit. Mr. A. I. 

 Root, in the last Gleanings, makes 

 some very excellent and pratical sug- 

 gestions about preventing the publica- 

 tion of the .slanders on comb honey, 

 and averting their baneful influence 

 by immediate action being taken, in 

 the locality of the transgressor, by 

 the intere.sted bee-keepers themselves. 

 Here is what he says : 



If there is anything that the vera- 

 cious scribes like to talk about in the 

 press, and roll under their tongues as 

 a precious morsel, and finally spit out 

 ujion tlie public, it is the subject of 

 adulteration. They seem to have gone 

 ■wild on the subject. They know that 

 people like to be told that they are 

 being humbugged ; and they know 

 that the story of "Yankee ingenuity" 

 will cause the gullible public to hold 

 up their hands, "Did you ever !" and 

 as long as there is a demand for it, so 

 long the same old story will be rehashed , 

 unless there is a stop put to it. 



" Manufactured comb honey," "arti- 

 ficial combs deftly filled and capped 

 over by means of appropriate machin- 

 ery" — oh dear! how stale it sounds ! 

 If the reporters could only change 

 their tune a little it would be gratifying ; 

 but "appropriate machinery" has to 

 be stuck in every time. Well, within 

 the last few weeks, or at least since the 

 Philadelphia Record began republishing 

 the comb-honey story, the whole press 

 all over the land has been reiterating it 

 in long and short squibs. Clipping 

 after clipping has been sent in until 

 we feel discouraged. We have pub- 

 lished them and refuted them publicly, 

 and have sent marked articles to the 

 editors, calling upon them for retrac- 

 tion. We have written private letters, 

 asking them in all fairness to be kiud 

 enough to make some amends. Nor 

 has Bro. Newman of the American Bee 

 JouRNAi been less vigilant. 



We have about come to the conclu- 

 sion that the bee-papers need assis- 

 tance in helping to cry down the evil. 

 Jones sees a false statement about the 

 comb-honey business, in one of the col- 

 umns of his local paper. He cuts it 

 out, marking the date and issue of the 

 paper and sends the same on to us, or 

 to Bro. Newman, of the American 

 Bee Journal. Well, so many clip- 

 pings like this have come in that it 

 would almost fill one issue to make 

 any thing like an appropriate denial 



for each one. Quite recently some 

 four or five correspondents, instead of 

 sending the marked article to us for 

 refutation, have themselves called upon 

 the editor, showingthe absurdity of the 

 statement in a recent issue of his paper. 

 In two or three instances they have 

 written out a refutation themselves, 

 and this refutation appears in the verj- 

 nest issue of the paper, so that the 

 false impression is corrccied right where 

 the mischief is done, and not in the col- 

 umns of a bee-paper whose readers 

 know perfectly well the untruth. 



The following is a spicily written 

 article from the pen of one of our sub- 

 scribers, Mr. Julius Gerard, of Mari- 

 posa, Texas ; and as it illustrates the 

 point we are getting at, we reproduce 

 it here entire : 



A PROFESSOR mistaken. 



Olucose as Artificial Honey. A Practical 

 Bee-Keeper^s Knowledge of the Facts. 



Editor Brackett News : — I sup- 

 pose when you want to get the real 

 facts about anything you refer to your 

 Encyclopedia Britannica ; for instance, 

 if jqu wish to know how far it is from 

 Brackett to the sun, you refer to the 

 Encyclopedia ; and whatever the given 

 number of miles may be, you or any 

 one else will accept it as a fact. I am 

 sorry to say, however, that my confi- 

 dence in the American Encyclopedia 

 has been lowered 100 per cent., because 

 I see at least one instance in which 

 hearsay is given out as true science. 



Mr. Chas. Morris, of the Philadel- 

 phia Acadeni}' of Science, writes con- 

 cerning glucose, in Vol. Ill of Ameri- 

 can Suplement, page 537, in the left- 

 hand column, 21st line from the top, 

 as follows : 



" Glucose is used chiefly in the man- 

 ufacture of table syrups and confection- 

 ery, in the brewing of ale and beer, 

 and to some extent as food for bees 

 and in the making of artificial honey. 

 No reliable statistics can be had as to 

 the quantity used in brewing, since 

 brewers seek to conceal the fact of its 

 employment. When it is fed to the 

 bees, the honey yielded bj' the bees is 

 almost pure glucose. In artificial-honey 

 making, the comb is made of paraftine, 

 and filled with pure glucose by machin- 

 ery. For whiteness and beauty it rivals 

 the best white-clover honey, and it can 

 be sold for less than^half the price. Its 

 one defect is, that it is not honey." 



Now, sir, this falsehood is given by 

 a professor of science, and published 

 as a fact in the Encyclopedia Britan- 

 nica — a work to which thousands of 

 people refer as authority. 



If the author of the article on glucose 

 will take the trouble to come out to 

 the Mariposa apiary, I will convince 

 him that his education as a bee-keeper 



has been sadly neglected, and that 

 what he wrote about artificial honey 

 being made of glucose and then put in 

 artificial coml> by machinery, is false ; 

 and if he has taken no more pains in 

 writing the other parts of his work 

 than he did in tliis, I would not give a 

 nickel for all the volumes of the E11C3- 

 clopedia Britannica. 



Mr. A. I. Root, of Medina, Ohio. 

 oflers a reward of ^1,000 to any one 

 who will sho^' or tell him where arti- 

 ficial honey is made ; this ofter was 

 made because so many false reports 

 have been cast abroad about hiiiiey. 

 Mr. Root has not yet found anybody 

 who claimed tlie reward.. 



If Prof. Morris, the glucose gent, 

 tells us that the distance to a certain 

 star is just 400.000 and | of a miU', I 

 for one am willing to swallow it, even 

 to a fraction of a mile. But when he 

 wants to tell me or any other progres- 

 sive bee-keeper an}" thing connected 

 with our industry, he should be a little 

 more careful, as we never go by liear- 

 say, but by facts. That man is dcjing 

 a hard-working class of men a great 

 injury. I can assure you, dear sir, 

 that there is no artificial comb honey 

 made by maeliinery, and that there 

 was never any made. 



Mariposa Apiary. Julius Gerard. 



Another one of our subscribers, also 

 secretary of the Ohio State Bee-Keepers' 

 Association, Miss Dema Bennett, of 

 Bedford, O., who, after having read 

 the usual yarn about manufactured 

 comb honey "deftly filled by appropri- 

 ate machinery," in a large Cleveland 

 daily, called upon the city editor in 

 person, proving the falsity and absurd- 

 ity of the statement respecting manu- 

 factured comb honey, which appeared 

 in a recent issue of his paper. After 

 telling him that tons and tons of honey 

 are produced honestly, she referred 

 him to us. As a result of this visit he 

 wrote us a letter asking for facts in 

 regard to the honey business. We 

 immediately sent him a card, ofl'ering 

 a thousand dollars for a sample of man- 

 ufactured comb honey, "deftly tilled 

 bj' means of appropriate machinery." 

 We also sent him a long letter, detail- 

 ing the importance of the honey indus- 

 try in the United States, telling him 

 where he could find out just how bees 

 " make hone)-," by sending a reporter. 

 We referred him to Dr. A. B. Mason, 

 Auburndale, O., and to H. R. Board- 

 man, of East Townsend, O., and we 

 requested, as a special favor to bee- 

 keepers, that he send a reporter to 

 either one of these gentlemen, and 

 report what he sees, in his own paper. 



A personal letter written to the edi- 

 tor who has damaged the bee-kee])ing 

 industrj- by one of the falsehoods, or, 

 better still, a personal visit itself, will 



