THE AMEBIC AX BEE-KEEPER. 



23 



tish " about all honey. But I for one 

 can never have any peace of mind in 

 using the term " honey-dew." I love 

 the truth too well. It certainly is not 

 dew; and giving a specially exalted 

 term to that which is usually inferior 

 is not candid. If we must use " whop- 

 pers" better have them big enough to 

 be readily recognized as such. I would 

 suggest the more fastidious term of 

 " angel-sweat." To come 'round to 

 facts, the aphis is not so very bad a 

 looking little creatine; and the secre- 

 tion of his nectar gland is not to be 

 condemned on account of its origin 

 any more than the secretion of the 

 cow's lacteal gland is to be condemned 

 on account of its origin. Let good 

 be good and bad be bad. There are 

 some et-ceteras of this corner of the 

 subject that seem a little meloderous; 

 but possibly we have heard them 

 worse than they arc 



When we hear a great ado about 

 dark and poor extracted honey, I think 

 we should remember that there is one 

 fruitful cause that is apt to be over- 

 looked. By all means let those who 

 ship Xo. 3 honey and mark it No. 1 

 be duly hauled over the coals; bid if 

 the buyer has put the can over the coals, 

 and spoiled the lioney, after the produc- 

 er did his duty honestly, it is rather a 

 hard fate for the producer to have to 

 bear the blame. A good deal of 

 earnest missionary work seems to be 

 needed, not only among buyers hut 

 among bee-keepers also, before the 

 danger of spoiling the honey in melt- 

 ing it will he one-half comprehended 

 as it ought. Nearly every one seems 

 to think that so iong as honey does 

 not boil it of course can not burn. 

 That is an awful mistake. Or perhaps 



we should concede that it cannot burn 

 bofore boiling; but as it can without 

 boiling he spoiled both in color and 

 taste, the fact that it is not "burnt" 

 is rather poor comfort. The square, 

 tin cans are altogether too handy to 

 set on the stove. On that account the 

 wooden packages are much safer for 

 the honey's good name. I have found 

 in my own experience that even a five 

 pound pail of honey set on a stove, 

 where it would he nearly impossible to 

 boil it if one tried to do so, will, never- 

 theless, manage somehow to darken in 

 color and have its flavor decidedly 

 changed for the worse. Let us con- 

 sider the state of things when a large 

 can is set on a stove. What is the 

 temperature of the iron under the can? 

 Perhaps 250° or 300°. The under side 

 of the tin speedily rises to neatly the 

 same, and the upper side to over 212°. 

 In contact with this high tempera- 

 ture the honey remains about as 

 long as it can without boiliDg. It 

 then springs off, and gives place to 

 another film of the same, which in turn 

 is heated to about 210° and sent off. 

 If the whole contents of the can were 

 fluid and warm, regular currents might 

 set in which would modify things and 

 prevent over-heating. But the bulk 

 of the honey is solid and cold and can- 

 not flow back and forth. It is plain 

 that a considerable part of the honey 

 in a can (if not all of it) may be sub- 

 jected peace-meal to the temperature 

 of 210°, while the mass is not at any 

 time much over blood-warm. It is 

 very unsafe to heat honey to 210°. 

 There seems to be a very great differ- 

 ence in the amount of heat different 

 samples of honey will stand. Some 

 honey can be boiled vigorously with 

 but a moderate degree of damage to 



