THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



347 



thing should be said to recall the claims 

 of comb honey, that its virtues may not 

 be forgotten and its production neglected. 

 It may be that, for the present, more mon- 

 ey can be made in running bees for ex- 

 tracted honey — five dollars to one, as 

 Jones says; but I think I can see reasons 

 why, with increased production, we may 

 expect extracted honey to depreciate in 

 price much faster than comb honey. Ex- 

 tracted honey must always compete with 

 similar sweets; such as sugar, molas- 

 ess, syrups, and glucose, and its principal 

 recommendation will be its novelty or 

 cheapness; while it is weighted in the 

 race for popularity by its inconvenient 

 tendency to candy, and if it does not 

 candy, it is immediately exposed to 

 the suspicion of being adulterated. 

 On the other hand, comb honey stands 

 without a rival — a thing stii generis 

 — captivating to the e3e — the symbol 

 of sweetness — a royal luxury. But so in- 

 dustriously have they who ought to know 

 better, talked about the enormity of eat- 

 ing "indigestible wax," that the proper 

 use of comb honey is almost a "lost art." 

 People struggle to reject every flake of 

 wax, or else eat their hot biscuit and hon- 

 ey as forbidden indulgence, dared with 

 full expectation of gripes and nightmare 

 as a penalty. The fact is, that honey 

 comb is one of the most wholesome foods 

 ever eaten. It will make hot biscuit and 

 fresh bread easily digestible. These 

 alone are rightly considered much harder 

 of dige.stion than stale bread, from the 

 fact that they pack, in chewing, into 

 masses impermeable to the solvent juices 

 of the digestive organs. But when they 

 are eaten with honey comb, the delicate 

 flakes of wax prevent the packing, while 

 the honey pervading the whole mass, is 

 readily dissolved out, leaving free access 

 for the gastric juice to all parts of the 

 food. The scales of wax, though indi- 

 gestible, are soft and smooth, and will 

 not irritate the most delicate membrane. 

 But besides being a delicious and whole- 

 some article of food, I regard comb hon- 

 ey as a specific cure for many difficulties 

 of digestion and irregularity of the bow- 

 els. In our day, drugs are at a discount 

 for the treatment of chronic diseases, and 

 people are generally seeking health from 

 a proper selection of foods instead of 

 medicines. For a long time Graham 

 bread and bran crackers have been pre- 

 scribed by the medical faculty for dys- 

 peptic affections and obstinate constipa- 

 tion; but the doctors are about finding 

 out that these things will ruin the diges- 

 tion of anything but a horse, as the rough, 

 silicious scales of bran irritate and lacer- 



ate the delicate membranes of the diges- 

 tive organs, to their speedv ruin. I can 

 assure all persons whose digestion needs 

 a little assistance, that they will find in 

 comb honey, eaten wax and all, just the 

 thing to help them— and a very agreeable 

 medicine to take, it is, too. 



The flakes of wax furnish a gentle stim- 

 ulus to the digestive membranes, without 

 in any way injuring them. To bee-keep- 

 ers I would say, produce extracted honey 

 by all means, if you can make more b}- 

 it; but for your own bread and butter, 

 and hot biscuit and hot cakes, u.se comb 

 honey, without being anxious to save all 

 the wax to make up into foundation, and 

 see if it isn't the best way to eat honey. 



The septum of comb built from founda- 

 tion, or comb built from deep cell founda- 

 tion, if the cells were very deep, could 

 never be broken up into the flakes of 

 which the Prof, writes so deljghtfully. 



WHEN COLONIES STORE THE MOST HONEY. 



It is not Solely a Question of Numbers — There 

 are other Conditions. 



Last month in commenting upon Dr. 

 Miller's idea that a populous colony stores 

 more honey in proportion to the number 

 of bees than does a small colony, I fear 

 that I did not make nn-self perfectly 

 clear upon one point. I said I believed 

 nothing was gained by having a colony 

 above the normal size. By this I did not 

 mean that a populous colony might not, 

 and probabl}' would, store more surplus 

 than a weak colony or even a colony of 

 ordinary strength. What I mean is this: 

 that I believe that a colony of normal 

 strength will store as nmch honey per 

 bee, other things being equal, as will a 

 very populous colony. Those words, 

 "other things being equal," are very im- 

 portant. What bee-keeper has not no- 

 ticed that when everything seemed to be 

 apparently equal, some colonies stored a 

 much larger surplus than others? It 

 often happens that a colony weak in num- 

 bers stores more surplus than the most 

 populous colony in the yard. Even in 

 a poor season it sometimes happens that 



