84 



TIIE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



[Oct., 



on to the honey board, and dry and warm the 

 whole. C. N. Abbott. 



Hartwell, W. London. 



[Translated from the Bienenzeitang.] 



Artificial Honey and H->ney Surrogate. 



About two years ago, the Birnrnzkittng 

 celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary. The ad- 

 vancement in the theory and practii e of bee-cul- 

 tnre during these twenty-live years was then 

 given in a brief review, but I do not remember 

 anywhere to have seen tlie mention of artificial 

 honey. Much was written in the papers, and 

 long discussions held in the meetings of the Bee 

 Associations concerning the theory and practice 

 of bee-keeping; but concerning artificial honey, 

 utterly nothing. The idea until now was un- 

 known. It wasre?ervtd for Herr Mchring, from 

 Frankenthal, to originate the idea and to enrich 

 the treasury of the German language with a new 

 word, and give to the students of bees nnd the 

 bee-culture, a new Prininus teclbiil.'U*. 



As has been heretofore made known in the 

 pages of the Bien-nz ityng, by letters from Baron 

 and Baroness von Berlepsch, that Herr Mehring 

 exhibited, among other excellent things, a glass 

 jar, which he claimed was tilled by the bees with 

 the Extract of Malt or thicken beerwort, where- 

 fore he called this product artificial honey. The 

 judges were in no little embarassment whether 

 they should yive a premium to the artificial 

 honey or not ; and I, as I saw from a letter. Prof 

 Siebold desired to obtain my opinion whether 

 the bees really changed the Malt Extract into 

 honey. This wish I will attempt to answer in 

 the fo lowing lines : 



The judges gave the highest premium to the 

 other articles of the exhibitor, but witheld the 

 premium from artificial honey, and justly. 



Artificial honey has a double meaning. You 

 might understand by it, honey, which having 

 been purified by art, is increased in value and 

 prepared for greater usefulness, and differs some- 

 what in this respect from ordinary honey, just 

 as through science Fruit is improved from its 

 wild condition. 



A premium given for this kind of honey would 

 have misled a large portion of the public, who 

 have had little experience in these things, to use 

 this word artifiei tl-honey in the above sense, and 

 think that the premium had been awarded to an 

 excellent quality of honey, for which a higher 

 price would be asked. 



The true meaning, however, of artificial 

 hom-y, is a honey that is not produced from 

 natural sources, from the nectar of fiowers, but is 

 made from a scientifically counterfeited or imi- 

 tated bee-pasturage, and bears the same relation 

 to natural honey, that artificial wine has to the 

 natural juice of the grape. It can have, to many 

 tongues, a very pleasant taste, and there is little 

 use of disputingover it ; and it can also be used for 

 many medicinal purposes, just as the celebrated 

 Malt Extract is used as a universal l'enicdy, 

 but it can never have the spicy and aromatic 

 taste of the true product of the fiower. Because 



the bees cannot put into the juice they bear into 

 the cells any new material ; they can only work 

 up and purify, but cannot produce the funda- 

 mental elements. 



There may be disputing about this, and the 

 award of the prize at Munich has ventilated the 

 question, whether the product of Mehring's re- 

 ceipt can be true honey, as, in this respect, the 

 bees do not only seek profit from the flower, 

 their best pasturage, but gather th.3 sweet juice 

 shed by the plant lice (honey-dew), and suck out 

 the juice of sweet fruits and seek sugar refiner- 

 ies, and which we name plaut-lice-honey resinous 

 honey, &c, so there is no ground why that 

 should not also be called honey which is made 

 scientifically and fed to the bees. 



It is well known that bees will readily take 

 thicker malt extract or malt syrup. Fifty years 

 ago, with my father, I fed the bees with pre- 

 pared malt syrup for the purpose of stimulating 

 brood-raising. 



I dreamt at the time of stocks rich in honey 

 made from feeding malt extract, but my dream 

 passed away with the time. And if the bees do 

 not repeatedly fly out and purify themselves, and 

 if they do not bring in pollen and do not obtain 

 the proper strength from the consumption of 

 their food, they will neglect it and will be in 

 danger of an attack of dysentery. During warmer 

 weather, and when the bees are enabled to make 

 continuous flights, further feeding is useless. 



It is better for the bees to procure little but 

 good food than to carry in much but bad honey, 

 which only gives trouble and expense, and crys- 

 talizing during the summer, endangers the win- 

 tering of the stock. If one considers that, owing 

 to the high price of grain and coal, this artifi- 

 cial food cannot be manufactured cheaply, and 

 that the bees will in no wise store in the cells as 

 much as may be given them, but will consume 

 some portion, it will be readily seen that this 

 work will not prove as remunerative as Herr 

 Mehrinjj expects ; and that through the praising 

 and selling of tasteless and unaromatic honey, 

 a good article will be brought into discredit and 

 lowered in price. The attempt to make bees a 

 mere machine for purifying sweet juices or syr- 

 ups will prove a failure. For this purpose we 

 have machines which will accomplish this end 

 by wholesale and consume nothing. 



It is wholly different with feeding, taking the 

 word in its true meaning in which it has hereto- 

 fore been used, namely, for the purpose of fur- 

 nishing the bees with food, not for storing in 

 their cells, but for the purposo of making wax 

 and stimulating the raising of brood, so that the 

 swarm would be in a position to take the great- 

 est advantage of the honey harvest. This malt 

 extract is very useful to fill up the intervals be- 

 tween the several honey harvests, or to lengthen 

 the harvest ; also to aid late and weak swarms 

 to complete the stores for wintering. As an in- 

 ducement to building comb and rearing brood, 

 a mixture of the malt extract is superior to pure 

 honey, in that it arouses the activity of the bees 

 sooner than the purer honey, and owing to the ni- 

 trogen it contains, compensates iu a very great 

 decree for pollen. 



In autumn and winter, when the bees should 



