284 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Apr. 15. 



foundation of the same shape and size in every 

 way, and isn't one as light as the other? How 

 much more friable is comb than foundation? 

 "Friable," according to the dictionary, means 

 " easily crumbled or pulverized." Natural comb, 

 dried with age, becomes brittle and friable; but 

 freshly built comb, at summer temperature, is 

 soft and yielding— pliable rather than friable. 

 I doubt whether there is a perceptible differ- 

 ence in the friability of fresh comb and fresh 

 foundation. Both become more friable with 

 age. 



" Once this snow has been melted, it can 



never be restored to its former state 



In a like manner, once comb has been melted 

 into wax, iis character is changed. It is no 

 longer comb, but wax.'' Is it possible, friend 

 H., that you don't know that freshly built 

 comb, made entirely by the bees, without any 

 intervention of man, is wax, and nothing but 

 wax? " Butter is butter; but melted butter is 

 grease; so comb is comb, but melted comb is 

 wax." I suppose in the strict sense of the term 

 that butter, either melted or unmelted, is 

 grease; but probably the word is here used to 

 stand for something objectionable. 



Since writing that last sentence I have had 

 my dinner, and had three kinds of butter— some 

 that had never been melted, some that had 

 been heated just enough to melt it, and some 

 that had been thoroughly heated for some 

 time, and kept above the boiling-point. Tested 

 separately, the last had a distinct cooked taste; 

 but on bread I don't know that it could be de- 

 tected; and the sample that was merely melted 

 had no change that could be detected. All 

 were excellent; and, living in the heart of the 

 Elgin butter region, I think I know what good 

 butter is. I wonder, when friend Hutchinson 

 quoted that sentence, whether he stopped to 

 think what melted butter really is like, and 

 whether he had often sampled it. Did he ever 

 eat hot biscuit, butter, and honey? If he did, 

 he surely ate melted butter, or " grease," as he 

 calls it. Did he never eat melted butter on hot 

 toast, beefsteak, in cake? Do his folks cook 

 asparagus, green peas, and all other vegetables 

 without melted butter? When he eats butter 

 on his potato, does he always manage to keep 

 the butter unmelted? 



Now I'll tell you what I think. I think when 

 he used melted butter as an illustration he sup- 

 posed he was giving an excellent illustration of 

 the difference between wax unmelted and wax 

 afterit had been melted. And so he was. And 

 he also thought that the melting materially in- 

 jured each article. Prejudice in case of the 

 butter, prejudice in case of the wax. Now if he 

 is allowed to sample a piece of bread on which 

 is spread butter that had once been melted, and 

 another piece spread with butter never melted, 

 I don't believe he could tell which was which. 

 Neither do I believe he could detect any differ- 



erence in taste between a piece of comb honey 

 whose wax had all been melted and one whose 

 wax had never been melted. Of cour.-e, I as- 

 sume that the cell walls should be equally thin 

 in each case, the possibility of which he admits. 



The Review speaks of "comb honey with its 

 delicious, fragile, toothsome, flaky comb." 

 First and last there has been a good deal of 

 that sort of talk, which, carefully analyzed and 

 properly classified, would probably come under 

 the head of nonsense. Comb is fragile, w hether 

 made of melted- or unmelted wax; but Is it 

 " flaky"? I never saw any of it flake apart; did 

 you? Does the pleasure of eating comb honey 

 come from the honey, or is it the wax that is so 

 "delicious, toothsome"? Here's a section of 

 honey that was cut a day or two ago, and cut in 

 such a way that a good part of the liquid has 

 drained out on the plate. Do you find the 

 drained honey on the plate so insipid that you 

 cut some of the comb that now contains no 

 honey, in order to make the honey " toothsome"? 

 Or if you cut off a piece, do you prefer to cut 

 from thecpart mostly drained so as to have a 

 larger proportion of the "delicious" flavor? 

 Isn't it a little strange that an article that 

 passes through the digestive organs unchanged, 

 and that is not in the slightest degree affect- 

 ed by strong sulphuric acid, should yet be so 

 "delicious, toothsome"? 



But after being melted, this delicious, fragile, 

 toothsome, flaky comb is nothing ;but "tough, 

 leathery, gobby wax." More than that, not 

 content with being an " abomination," as the 

 Revieiv puts it, in and of itself, according to 

 Progressive it takes unto itself horrors not of its 

 own originating, in passing through commer- 

 cial centers. It has consorted with "tallow 

 that has been rendered from animals which 

 have died from disease," and " has a lot of this 

 filthy grease adhering to it. When this wax is 

 melted, this filthy grease that adheres to it 

 while coming in contact with sheep pelts that 

 have been skinned from the bodies of sheep 

 that have died of disease, and the filthy tallow 

 and soap-grease aforementioned, will become a 

 part of it." 



Now, suppose there are furnished to the 

 bees cells one fourth or one-half inch deep, and 

 a consumer has read \yhat is said in Review and 

 Progressive, have you any idea that you can get 

 him to put such comb honey into his mouth? 

 You say. " No, and he ought not to put it into 

 his mouth." Well, then, I go to him and say to 

 him, "I don't use manufactured comb; I just 

 use foundation such as all comb honey general- 

 ly contains. It's made of the same kind^of ma- 

 terial as that other fellow's, but there's only 

 half as much of it in a pound, so you'll have to 

 eat only half as much nastiness." Do you sup- 

 pose he'll buy an ounce more of one than the 

 other? 



Now brethren, in all honesty, if the material 



