November, 1921 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



689 



sperger, Nice, France, as follows: "I took 

 common beet sugar; pounded it as fine as 

 possible, then dropped in cold extracted 

 honey till the dough was so firm it would 

 hardly flatten down when made into a 

 ball." Baldensperger was a former pupil 

 of Benton and probably learned to make 

 the candy under his direction. In 1917 

 Grant Anderson (American Bee Journal, 

 LVII, p. 130) gives the following directions: 

 "This must be made of the best powdered 

 sugar and well-ripened honey of good qual- 

 ity. Make a stiff dough of the candy and 

 let it set several hours and then work it 

 over again. * * * Never heat the can- 

 dy in making." In 1915 one of the pres- 

 ent authors (Beekeeping, p. 426) gave the 

 following direction: "A soft paste or 

 candy made by kneading together confec- 

 tioners' (not powdered) sugar and honey 

 without heating." 



Use of Glycerine and Glucose. 



We may omit from the present discus- 

 sion the various soft candies that have been 

 recommended for different purposes into 

 which other ingredients were placed. It 

 should be stated, however, that, some years 

 before, A. E. Manum had added a small 

 amount of glycerine to keep the candy soft 

 (E. E. Eoot, ijleanings in Bee Culture, 1890, 

 XVIII, pp. 847,849) ; and in 1893 E. E. Eoot 

 stated in Gleanings in Bee Culture (XXI, 

 pp. 759-760) that he had experimented with 

 glycerine. In 1912, after the new postal 

 regulation went into effect, Tyrrell (Bee- 

 keepers' Eeview, XXV, p. 261), quoted a 

 queen-breeder to the effect that he was 

 using glycerine to keep his candy soft. Sev- 

 eral attempts have been made to make a 

 candy containing commercial glucose for 

 use in feeding bees in winter as well as for 

 mailing cages; but, as glucose is so disas- 

 trous to bees in confinement, we need not 

 go into details regarding this type of candy. 

 In searching for facts regarding the past 

 history of candy for queen-cages, the au- 

 thors have found 71 articles dealing with 

 the subject, and have passed by many notes 

 of no importance. In the summary so far 

 given no attempt has been made to include 

 even all the better articles, but rather to 

 show the trend of the time. 

 Recent Experiments by Bureau of Ento- 

 mology. 



During the past year or two complaints 

 from queen-breeders regarding candy made 

 of boiled honey have been unusually fre- 

 quent, and more recently they have com- 

 plained of their inability to make a good 

 candy of invert sugar. Because of the im- 

 portance of the queen trade it seemed well 

 worth while to make some study of the 

 problem, and this was done in co-operation 

 with the Carbohydrate Laboratory of the 

 Bureau of Chemistry, Jay M. Smith being 

 the chemist engaged in the work. The first 

 task seemed to be to make candies of many 

 sorts, just such as had probably been made 

 by queen-breeders, to see how quickly they 



became too dry for use. Tlie honeys used 

 were clover, alfalfa, sage, and a mixture 

 chiefly from tulip tree. Sage honey is one 

 which does not granulate, and alfalfa is 

 perhaps the most quickly granulating honey 

 found in large quantity on the market. Can- 

 dies were made of both boiled and unboiled 

 honeys, of invert sugar, and of boiled honey 

 to which invert sugar had been added to 

 increase the proportion of levulose. It was 

 assumed that, since levulose is hygroscopic, 

 it is the agency by means of which the 

 candy is kept soft, and from this it might 

 be inferred that sage honey would make a 

 better candy than alfalfa honey. At that 

 time the statement of A. I. Eoot to the effect 

 that sage honey does not make a good candy 

 was unknown to the author, and it was 

 found that when the sage honey was boiled 

 it became more discolored than did the 

 other honeys. In boiling the honeys they 

 were found to boil at a temperature of 

 about 248 °F. 



After work had been begun on this sub- 

 ject a visit was made to one of the most 

 extensive queen-rearing establishments in 

 the country to observe how the candy was 

 actually made with which such poor results 

 were obtained, it having been impossible to 

 arrive at a correct understanding of these 

 difficulties by correspondence. The candy 

 was there made with commercial invert 

 sugar. This was first heated to 176°F., at 

 which point powdered sugar was introduced, 

 all at one time, in the proportion of one part 

 of invert sugar to slightly less than two 

 parts of powdered sugar. The introduction 

 of the mass of powdered sugar lowered the 

 temperature, but it was then kept over the 

 water bath (205 °F.) and stirred vigorously 

 for 40 minutes, in order to produce a thoro 

 mixing of the two sugars and to separate 

 the remaining crystals of powdered sugar 

 completely and to coat each one with a film 

 of liquid invert sugar. At the end of the 

 40-minute period the liquid had reached a 

 temperature of 191 °F.; it was then poured 

 out to cool, but in most cases it had been 

 found that the resulting candy was either 

 too soft or too hard. 

 Why Heating Caused Frequent Failures. 



On returning to Washington a small 

 amount of candy was made by the same 

 process and in similar proportions, with the 

 modification that the powdered sugar was 

 introduced slowly; and in this case it was 

 found that, at the end of 40 minutes' stir- 

 ring, the whole amount of powdered sugar 

 had been melted (which had not been the 

 case when the larger quantity was made), 

 then on cooling the mass was a hard clear 

 candy. The same was true when even a 

 larger proportion of powdered sugar was 

 used. It is, therefore, evident that the 

 trouble with this recipe arises from the 

 fact that a variable amount of powdered 

 sugar is melted, and, on cooling, it either 

 ajiproaches a hard clear candy on the one 

 hand or a fondant that is entirely too soft 



