19U1 



THE AMERICAN BEE-KEEPER 



49 



ODDS AND ENDS. 



BY I'. GREIXER. 



IT lias long b(>ea an open secret that 

 the honey served at the hotels id 

 Switzerland is an adulterated mix- 

 ture, or, rather, an imitation that has 

 never seen any honey. Mr. Dadant, on 

 his visit in Switzerland has had occasion 

 to eat this mixture. He found it not 

 alone pleasant to the taste but he came 

 to the conclusion that it must have been 

 the genuine article, honey. German 

 writers think it rather a joke on Dadant 

 that he could allow himself to be thus 

 taken in. It must be, they say, that in 

 America the adulterators of honey have 

 not made rapid strides to bring their art 

 to perfection : and they assert that in 

 Europe honey is so perfectly imitated 

 that the adulterated article can many 

 times not be distinguished from the real 

 article. Further they say, such methods 

 as given by Mr. Cowan in Chicago to de- 

 tect adulteration, fail to give any result 

 with such adulterated honey as is found 

 on the European continent. It seems to 

 me that the American mixers are bunglers 

 and have no eye for business. At the 

 New York State Bee-keepers' Conven- 

 tion it was stated that bogus honey 

 found in the stores of the City of Geneva 

 was of such a vile nature that it was 

 tliought one little bottle of it would 

 bo sufticient to last a family a month. 

 How slupid it is for any one to 

 offer such \'\\i'. stuff for sale at 

 all I It would seem that in tlie fii'St place 

 it should be made pleasant to the taste. 

 They do seem to understand that part of 

 it In Switzerland. It is said that their 

 lioney is made from corn syrup flavored 

 with extracts distilled from flowers, and 

 that chemistry fails to reveal any dift'er- 

 ence between hive-honey and the adul- 

 terated article. 



I have known bee-keepers in Virginia 

 ti) add some granulated sugar syrup to 

 their blue-thistle honey ; I have spliced 

 out my own product this year in a similar 

 way in order that it might last us for our 

 buckwheat cakes during the season. The 



addition of sugar syrup prevents the 

 granulation of the mixture. 1 do not 

 recommend to mix honey in this fashion 

 for the trade ; although it would often be 

 an advantage if honey put up in glass 

 could be k-ept in liquid form. The fancy 

 trade wants clear, transparent honey, and 

 it is a problem to keep pure honey from 

 granulating. 



Mr. Rice, of the New York State 

 Farmers' Institute force, is an extensive 

 apple and fruit giower in Westchester 

 County. lie spoke on spraying at a late 

 Institute. '" The time to spray is," he 

 said, "before the buds open, then again 

 a little after the petals of the blossoms 

 have fallen. Never spray during the 

 bloom, because you would not only Ivill a 

 multitude of small insects that help in 

 carrying pollen from blossom to blossom, 

 but principally the honey-bees, the fruit- 

 growers" friends; besides, you would ma- 

 terially diminish your fruit-crop." 



Prof. Beach, Horticulturist at the New 

 York Agricultural Experiment Station, 

 made a similar statement before -the New 

 York State Bee-keeperS' Association in 

 (ieneva. He said : "There seems to be 

 a craze among some fruit-growers of 

 certain localities to spray trees while 

 they are in bloom. We have made some 

 experiments placing pollen grains into a 

 sweet fluid. There they would grow just 

 as though they had lodged on tlie stigma 

 of a blossom. By adding to this fluid 

 two per cent, bordeaux or Paris green 

 mixture, the pollen grains lost their 

 vitality, showing that arsenic and sul- 

 phate of copper are detrimental to fruit 

 setting. In actual practice we found that 

 trees sprayed thoroughly while in bloom 

 bore almost no fruit whatever; those not 

 sprayed while the bloom lasted bore 

 abundantly." 



When scientists and the practical fruit- 

 growers agree so perfectly on this ques- 

 tion I hardly think there will be a great 

 deal of trouble in the future between the 

 bee-keeper and the f I'uit-grower along the 

 line of spraying. 



