220 



THE AMERICAN APICULTURIST. 



4 Honey of Leipzig, Heather 



candied, 3 years old o°.8 



5 Honey of Leipzig, Heather 



candied, 35 years old o°.6 



6 Honey, Wurtemberg, candied 



2 years old o°.3 



7 Honey, American, candied, 



2 years old o°,6 



8 Honey, Chili, candied, 2 



years old 1°, 



9 Honey, Wurtemberg (pre- 



pared cold), 4 years old 0°. 



10 Honey, Thuringia, clover in 



comb i°.2 



11 Honey, Thuringia, spring 



flowers o°.3 



From this table it follows that all 

 honey, no matter what the age and 

 the source of supply, contains exclu- 

 sively inverted sugar and, moreover, 

 that the quantity of fruit sugar which, 

 under the polariscope, turns the ray 

 of light to the left, is constantly strong 

 enough to compensate for the devia- 

 tion to the right caused by the nat- 

 ural grape sugar. In a single word, 

 then, a// honey, if it is pure, is en- 

 tirely without action on polarized 

 light or deflects it shghtly to the left, 

 but never to the right. In order to 

 know what action on polarized light 

 a honey, produced by the feeding 

 manufactured glucose to bees, would 

 have, some direct trials were made. 



It will be remembered that it is 

 well known to beekeepers that glu- 

 cose acts in an unhealthy manner, 

 and often deadly, on bees ; and that 

 no wefl-read beekeeper would dream 

 of feeding glucose to produce honey. 

 With glucose food bees get the diar- 

 rhoea, their belly swells, then comes 

 paralysis and death. 



Notwithstanding that, and in the 



interests of truth, one of the members 

 of the Leipzig Bee Society sacrificed 

 a colony by feeding it glucose. He 

 tried feeding it solid and in solution, 

 but it was only after having mixed a 

 thick syrup of it with equal parts of 

 honey, that he could get his bees to 

 take down any quantity. Having 

 got a comb well filled it was extracted 

 in the presence of witnesses. This 

 honey had a good odor but was dark, 

 very liquid and remained a long time 

 as liquid as syrup. 



From three different samples of 

 this honey thus produced, were pre- 

 pared solutions of twenty per cent, 

 decolorized by means of animal char- 

 coal, and the polariscope then gave 

 the following results : 



1° + 3°7 

 2° + ^% 



3° + 3°7 



It suffices then, to have but a very 

 minute quantity of manufactured 

 glucose to obtain a striking deviation 

 of the ray of polarized light and that 

 to the right. These remarks were 

 afterward verified by observations on 

 solutions in which were mixed di- 

 rectly, from five to twenty per cent 

 of glucose. 



The Swiss honeys, of which men- 

 tion was made above, all deflected, 

 without e:xception, the ray of light 

 in the polariscope to the right some 

 8° to 13° and were declared impure. 

 The manager of one of the largest 

 factories for Swiss honey, later on, 

 admitted that all honey put up by his 

 firm contained glucose ; and that be- 

 cause the public demanded honey 

 that would remain liquid and not 

 candy which, in the eyes of the pub- 

 lic, is a proof of purity. To prevent 



