168 



THE AMERICAN BEE KEEPER. 



June 



(From New York Sun.) 



THE VAKIETIES OF HONEY. 



A Gamut of Sweets Purnished by the 

 Bees of the Land. 



Adulteration of Honey and Devices to As- 

 sist the Bees in Making it— Califor- 

 nia's Big Honey Orop— The Dif- 

 ferences in Honey Extracted 

 from Various Blossoms. 



Who is there among country bred 

 people who has not at some time in 

 his life i-evelled in the luxury of 

 buckwheat caljes and honey? Not 

 the "Brown three!" buckwheat cakes 

 of the modern quick-lunch eating 

 house, made of a sophisticated buck- 

 wheat flour deprived of nearly all 

 the distinctive characteristics of the 

 old-fashioned buckwheat and mixed 

 with some sort of baking powder that 

 does the raising while the cakes are 

 cooking on the griddle: but cakes 

 made of a buckwheat that was ground 

 at a country mill whose power came 

 from an old water wheel, or a long- 

 armed sail. This buckwheat was 

 made into a batter, the raising of 

 which was the nightly care of the 

 housewife, and was never just right 

 unless the batter jar had been in 

 steady use for at least a week after 

 the first setting with baker's yeast. 

 No little, thin, tasteless cakes like 

 those of today came off the griddles 

 then, but big, hearty brown beauties 

 from which a breakfast could be made 

 that would last a man while he did a 



hearty half- day's work between the 

 eating of them and his dinner hour. 

 Upon these cakes he was wont to 

 spread butter or sweets, and the best 

 of all the sweets was honey. 



Buckwheat cakes came in honey 

 time, for in those olden days it was a 

 saying among countrj' folks that the 

 buckwheat was not fit to eat until 

 heavy frosts had come, and by that 

 time the honey had been gathered 

 from the hives. Maybe to-day it is 

 not possible to get such buckwheat 

 flour except where country millers 

 still grind it, but of honey one may 

 have an abu ndance that could only be 

 equalled in the old days when some 

 great honeytree had been discovered 

 and robbed of its hidden stores. And 

 as for variety, one may enjoy more 

 kinds than our forefathers conceived 

 possible. 



He who ate honey in New York 

 city a generation ago was a lucky 

 man, for at that time very little found 

 its way into the markets. To-day 

 every grocery has honey for sale, and 

 many of them have it displayed in 

 attractive packages in many forms, 

 both strained clear from the comb, 

 and in the comb just as it left the 

 hives of the busy bees. When honey 

 first became an important article of 

 commerce in this country one big 

 grocery house in New York became 

 the principal handler of it. It was 

 said in those days that the firm bought 

 all the honey produced in the United 

 States, and sold twice as much. There 

 are houses still in the trade that sell a 

 great deal more "honey" than they 

 buy, but there are many others that 

 deal only in pui'e goods. 



Wandering into one of these the 

 other day, a Sun reporter was aston- 



