there is a scarcity of lioney in Septem- 

 ber. I do not find that bees die so much 

 from eating thin fall honey as from 

 eating sour clover honey. I lost jnst 

 one third of my bees ; and those I ship- 

 ped off in November and December 

 nearly all died, because "they were dis- 

 turbed to death." Do not buy or sell 

 bees after September 1st. 

 New Buffalo, Mich., May 6, 1879. 



For the American Bee Journal. 



My Recipe for Bee Food, &c. 



w. m'cracken. 



Analysis has shown the principal ele- 

 ments of honey to be water, sugar, 

 vegetable acid, mucilage, coloring, fla- 

 vor, and a little extractive or volatile 

 matter; the minute principals, gum, 

 resin and bitter, and in some instances 

 a little pipeline. I would suggest that 

 apiarists raise the money necessary to 

 make a perfect analysis, and place the 

 work in the hands of Prof. A. J. Cook, 

 who will give an honest speciflcation, as 

 he is an interested party. He should 

 take three or four grades of honey— 

 basswood, clover and buckwheat — all of 

 first quality, mix them thoroughly to- 

 gether, and from the compound make 

 his analysis, and give a formula for arti- 

 ficially making 100 lbs. Individually, a 

 fortune might be made from establish- 

 ing a correct system of feeding bees 

 with proper food. I have intended to 

 ■do this, but from want of money have 

 been obliged to abandon it. Here is my 

 recipe for bee food, as near as I could 

 determine without specific analyses : 



Take 4 quarts of strained mucilage, 

 made from the young green pods of okra 

 or slippery elm bark ; it should be made 

 in a tin or granite ware vessel, as 

 iron will blacken it ; to this add 12 lbs. 

 of clarified sugar, slowly bring it to a 

 boil in water or a sand-bath, then set it 

 off the fire ; to 1 pint of water stir in 1 

 ounce of citric acid, until dissolved; 

 stir this in the syrup thoroughly, then 

 put in an ounce of alcohol, to which 4 

 drops oil of sassafras, 10 drops oil of 

 lemon, and 15 drops extract of vanilla 

 have been added ; stir in well, then add 

 3 lbs. of natural honey and the white of 

 1 egg beaten to a froth; stir it well; 

 when it has cooled down to a natural 

 temperature, stir in pure cold rainwater 

 until the proper consistency is obtained. 



My observations have led me to be- 

 lieve that bees secrete more wax from 

 some kinds of food than from others, 

 and when they have no comb to make 

 or repair, the wax is shed while on the 

 wing, and that dropped from their 

 •bodies in the hive is sweptout, or picked 



up and carried out. Wax is an excre- 

 ment, one of the results of digestion. 

 Honey which crystallizes exhibits a 

 want of acid and water ; that which 

 ferments is lacking in sugar and muci- 

 lage ; there is rarely ever an excess of 

 acid in natural honey ; acid prevents 

 crystallization and evaporation. 



To catch an issuing or flying swarm, 

 I set up a rod about 12 feet long, upon 

 the top of which is a hollow globe mir- 

 ror 4 inches in diameter; underneath 

 the globe is a large sponge saturated 

 with water, sweetened with honey fla- 

 vored with extract of lemon and ottar 

 of roses ; the rod has a smooth socket- 

 joint under the sponge, so when the 

 bees are laid on a portable table, the 

 rod is drawn away and the bees covered 

 with the transferring box, connected 

 by a tube to the hive intended to retain 

 them. 



Houston, Texas, Feb. 16, 1879. 



For the American Bee Journal. 



Action of Honey on Glass. 



W. O. CARPENTER. 



In reply to Mr. W. E. Edwards' re- 

 marks, that the honey he supplied one 

 of his customers decomposed glass jars 

 into which it was placed, I beg to sug- 

 gest the only two causes that could 

 have occasioned it— being an old glass- 

 maker 1 know something of the nature 

 of the material. First, nearly, if not 

 quite all, the glass-wares in this country 

 are blown in a mould, the metal is 

 gathered at the end of a pipe, placed in- 

 side of the mould while red-hot, and 

 blown until it tills the mould ; the con- 

 sequence is, the metal being sometimes 

 unequally blown, one part of the article 

 becomes thinner than another, and of 

 course very easily broken through ; you 

 may observe this frequently in your 

 broken lamp glasses, one part being 

 perhaps % of an inch thick, and another 

 as thin as paper ; the same thing occurs 

 in your bottles, the part round the 

 shoulder often breaks off ; all arising 

 from unequal gathering. The second 

 cause may possibly arise from an excess 

 of glucose being in the honey, the glu- 

 cose having calcium or lime with tree 

 sulphuric acid ; this combination would 

 produce fluoric acid which has a strong 

 affinity for glass, and would soon cor- 

 rode it, but then the effects would be 

 visible on the surface of the glass, and 

 Mr. Edwards states "the appearance of 

 the glass was not changed." This 

 brings me back to my first idea that the 

 glass vessel was of uneven thickness 

 and admitting of a knife being pushed 

 through it. 



