358 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



September 



of fruits and to furnish the material 

 needed for muscular work. 



"The variations in the composition 

 of honey from one year to another 

 have even been found in chemical 

 analysis. In 1911, a very dry year, 

 the proportion of glucose in honey 

 rose to 72 to 74 per cent instead of 

 the usual 65 to 68 per cent." 



Paul Carton. 



(The reader will note that the nat- 

 ural glucose in honey is entirely dif- 

 ferent in its properties from the arti- 

 ficially manufactured glucose pro- 

 duced by the action of sulphuric acid 

 upon starch, which the above writer 

 condemns in the beginning of his 

 article. — Editor.) 



CURING CHRONIC RHEUMATISM 

 WITH THE STING OF BEES 



By J. R. Schmidt 

 That rheumatism can be cured by 

 the sting of the honeybee is the firm 

 belief of George Renner, of Cincin- 

 nati, who is taking this novel treat- 

 ment to eradicate the disease from 

 his system. Each Wednesday and 

 Sunday morning IVIr. Renner visits the 

 apiai-y of Fred Muth and submits to 

 being stung by the honeybees. At 

 lirst, when Mr. Renner could just 

 hobble along with the aid of crutches, 

 as high as ten stings were the strenu- 

 ous treatment, but now Renner can 

 walk without the aid of a cane, and 

 only two stinging bees are applied 

 twice a week. This novel treatment, 



painful as it may seem, is a welcome 

 relief for the incessant pain of the 

 rheumatism. 



"At first the sting of the bees was 

 very painful to me and the swellings 

 resulting from the stings were great, 

 but as my system gradually became 

 inoculated with the poison from the 

 stings the pain and swelling gi-ew less 

 in proportion. I can now take the 

 stings without flinching and feel very 

 little pain at all. It certainly is cur- 

 ing me." 



Fred Muth explains the strange 

 cure this way: "It is a well-known 

 fact that the sting of the honeybee is 

 made painful by the formic acid which 

 enters the wound when the bee stings. 

 This acid is contained in a tiny little 

 bag attached to the thick end of the 

 stinger. When a honeybee stings, 

 this little bag of acid and the sur- 

 rounding muscles break away from 

 the body of the bee and the bee flies 

 away and dies, while the sting pro- 

 pelled by the adhering muscles, sticks 

 into the flesh and keeps on imbedding 

 itself deeper and deeper, at the same 

 time pumping the formic acid into the 

 wound. Physicians have found that 

 formic acid counteracts rheumatism, 

 and when introduced into the system, 

 in many cases, causes a cure. Allow- 

 ing one's self to be stung by the 

 honeybees is introducing formic acid 

 into the system, which in turn coun- 

 teracts rheumatism." 



Ohio. 



THE CHINESE BEES 



By B. Grudnoff 



I made my first acquaintance with 

 those bees in Peking, in the Russian 

 Orthodox Mission, and also through 

 other beekeepers in the Peking Prov- 

 ince. 



The exterior of those bees reminds 

 me of our Caucasian bees, from Aba- 

 sia (Asiatic Russia), but they are of a 

 smaller size and brighter color. 



The Chinese bees possess the same 

 quality as the Caucasian — they are 

 fond of work and of good disposition. 

 They collect clear and transparent 

 honey. The old wax they destroy 

 nearly altogether, partly in winter 

 time, replacing it with a new, white 

 wax. They do not keep at all any 

 dark honey-combs. 



It is necessary to notice a particu- 

 lar quality of the Chinese bees: they 

 never bring propolis (bee-glue), and 

 do not use it in the beehive if it is 

 given to them, and in all cases they 

 use only wax, and even the holes in 

 the beehive they glue with a pure 

 white wax. At least, being one and a 

 half years in China, I did not see any 

 propolis anywhere. I supposed first 

 that in China they did not have 

 those kinds of plants from which pro- 

 polis could be obtained, but those 

 doubts were destroyed by one Chinese 

 beekeeper who wrote for bees from 

 the Far East (Siberia) to China. And 

 those bees collected lots of propolis 

 while the others, next to them, had 

 not a particle of it. I think that those 

 bees must be very interesting to 

 American beekeepers, because they 

 will always prepare clean sections 

 without propolis, and it won't be nec- 

 essai^y to lose time cleaning them, as 

 is always necessary when getting 

 honey from bees of other races. 



If any one of the American bee- 

 keepers has any interest in these bees, 

 it is possible to order them from the 

 Russian Orthodox Mission in China, 

 Peking (Bei-gooane) . 

 Java. 



Frtd. Muth applying the stinging bees to Renncr's arm. 



STORING THE HONEY. 



By L. H. Cobb 



A good many beginners in beekeep- 

 ing will have a fairly generous sup- 

 ply of surplus honey this year if con- 

 ditions are general as they are with 

 us. I know some of these who plan to 

 keep most of their honey for home 

 use, and they are planning how to 

 store it, even now, and the plans of 

 the amateur in this line are apt to be 

 just opposite to what they should be. 



Honey should never be stored in a 

 cellar or kept in a refrigerator. Cool- 

 ness is not what honey needs to keep 

 it in good condition. It should be 

 stored in a dry, warm place as free 

 from dust as possible. Mice and ants 

 are both destructive pests, and to be 

 guarded against. It is not bard to 

 guard against the mice, but to prevent 

 ants getting to the combs is another 

 question. One can hardly make the 

 container, in which comb honey in 

 the frame or section is stored, tight 

 enough to stop ants, so the next best 

 thing is to have it set up on a table 

 fitted with ant protection. I have set 

 the legs of the table in pans with a 



