BBB KEEPERS. 427 



Virgil, however, is the only poet who has condescended to devote a whole book 

 to bees and their products. His fourth book of the Georgics treats of the culture 

 of bees, and indulges in some side remarks on the composition of honey. He re- 

 gai-ds it as wrii mellis coelestia dma, "the celestial gift of serial honey." In this he 

 did not intend to be scientific, but he was more so than he knew. 



Flowers do not get the sugar from which the honey is made from the soil, but 

 they build it of the gases in the air. 



Virgil continues by giving directions for building the hives and managing the 

 8warm.i, and describes a battle between two discordant kings, forgetting that they 

 'are always too lazy to fight. 



But lately on re-reading the lines of this ancient poet, I was overcome with the 

 suspicion that he was not so anxious to tell us about honey as to find some excuse 

 for describing the matrimonial troubles of Orpheus, and his descent into hell in 

 search of his semi-plutonian wife. Just what this story has to do with bee culture 

 I am told can only be appreciated by the unfortunate apiarist who has incurred 

 the vindictive enmity of a belligerent swarm. 



CONSTITUENTS OF HONBY. 



Honey is composed of several kinds of sugars, water, certain acids and various 

 aromatic substances derived from flowers. In addition to these are found, also, 

 particles of pollen and other fragments of flowers, bitter alkaloidal principles, and 

 always an alcohol. 



The question is often asked, " Does the honey in the hive have the same compo- 

 sition as the sugar in the flowers?" No satisfactory answer has yet been given to 

 this question. Certainly the change which is produced in the organism of the bee, 

 if any, is a slight one. Cane sugar, at least, is somewhat changed by pa?sing 

 through the organism of the bee, and emerges therefrom largely as a kind of glu- 

 cose. 



SUGARS OF HONEY. 



The principal sugars found in honey are as follows : 



(a). Dextrose. This sugar is a kind of glucose which twists a plane of polarized 

 light strongly to the right, whence its name. It crystallizes in tufts of fine needles, 

 and it is this constituent which is most active in efTecting the solidification of 

 honey. It reduces alkaline salts of copper to a sub-oxide, and is easily changed 

 into alcohol and carbonic acid by fermentation. The chemical structure of dextrose 

 is C. 6, H. 12, O. 6. 



(b). Levulose, a kind of glucose which twists a polarized plane to the left and 

 also reduces the solution of copper. lis chemical composition is the same as that 

 of dextrose. 



(c). Sucrose. This is ordinary cane sugar. It is yet doubtful whether it exists 

 in normal honey. It turns the plane of polarized light to the right, and has no 

 action whatever on solutions of copper. Its chemical composition is C. 12, H. 22, 

 O. 11. 



