142 



April, 1909. 



honey in 60-pound cans is 8 cents, and 

 I get it, too. 



Now if all bee-keepers would demand 

 these prices, which are very reasonable, 

 they could get them. At present the 

 large dealers and cracker factories are 

 offering only 5 cents for honey. But 

 after all, the great enemy of our in- 

 dustry is glucose. Go into any country 

 or village store, and 5'ou will probably 

 find a small amount of honey on sale, 

 and as much as a dray load of pails 

 containing the so-called corn syrup. 

 My friends, are you aware that this 

 stuff is not fit to eat? Then what are 

 you doing to educate your people in 

 reference to sweets for the table? I 

 tell my people it is all right to use pure 

 sugar syrups if they prefer them, and 

 I think that only such should be al- 

 lowed on the market. If we could 

 handicap glucose as manufactured but- 

 ter was handicapped by the dairy-men, 

 vou would see a different state of af- 

 fairs in the honey-trade. 



It is not appetite but greed that causes 

 such an immense sale of glucose syrup 

 for table use. The men who make it 

 are actuated onlv by greed of gain. I 

 have talked with several people who 

 have worked in glucose factories and 

 they each and all say that they would 

 not" think of eating the stuff. Some of 

 these are good honey customers. Cheap 

 boarding houses use it, again from mo- 

 tives of greed, and last, but not least, 

 farmers who have hired hands to feed. 

 Well, there are some farmers in this 

 part ' of the country who would not 

 carrv such stuff into their houses, and 

 among this class I have my best honey 

 customers. A man who puts honey on 

 the table for his hired help will lose 

 nothing bv so doing. They will appre- 

 ciate his desire to give them good food, 

 and work all the better to his inter- 

 est. . , . 



On the other hand, there is nothing 

 that will more quickly advertise the 

 cheap, second-class quality of a public 

 house than the use of glucose on the 

 table in the place of honey or pure 

 syrups. 



Bridgeport, Wis., Dec. 12, 1908. 



The Care of Extracted Honey 



BY DR. E. F. PHILLIPS 



In charge of Apiculture. Bureau of Entomology. 



Department of Agriculture, 



Washington. D. C. 



I was recently asked by the officers 

 of the National Association to prepare 

 a paper for this meeting. However, ow- 

 ing to the shortness of the time after 

 the request came, I was unable to pre- 

 pare a new paper, but agreed to read 

 a part of a paper which I had prepared 

 for publication on the production and 

 care of extracted honey. I shall omit 

 the first part of this paper which deals 

 with the production, and shall read only 

 the portion pertaining to the care of 

 the honey after extraction. The entire 

 paper will be published soon as a part 

 of one of the bulletins of the Bureau 

 of Entomology. 



The Ripening of Honey. 



When nectar is gathered from flowers 

 by the worker-bees, the amount of wat- 



American l^ee Journal 



er contained in it is very high. It is 

 generally supposed that, by the time bees 

 reach the hive to deposit the nectar in 

 the cells, part of this water has been 

 removed; at any rate, during the pro- 

 cess of ripening, the amount of water 

 is very much reduced, until, in thor- 

 oughly ripened honey, it will not ex- 

 ceed 25 percent and is generally not 

 more than 20 percent. Some very ripe 

 honeys will have as little as 12 percent 

 of water in them. If more than 25 per- 

 cent of water remains in the honey at 

 the time of extraction, it will probably 

 ferment. 



The ripening of honey consists not 

 only of the evaporation of the surplus 

 water of the nectar, but especially of 

 tbe transformation of the sugars of the 

 nectar into the levulose and dextrose of 

 honey. Unripe honeys contain a larger 

 proportion of sucrose or cane-sugar, 

 and it is probable that the longer the 

 honey remains in the hive the less of 

 sucrose will be found in it. While hon- 

 eys vary all the way from zero to 8 

 or 10 percent in their sucrose content, 

 the purest honeys are those which con- 

 tain the least. The official honey stand- 

 ard of the Association of Official Agri- 

 cultural Chemists allows 8 percent of 

 sucrose in honey. 



It is the policy of most bee-keepers 

 to allow this ripening to take place in 

 the hive by waiting until the honey is 

 almost all or entirely capped, and this 

 is undoubtedly the preferable method. 

 It is a matter of common observation 

 that honey which remains in the hive 

 for a long time has a better "body" and 

 has more of the characteristic honey 

 aroma. By ripening in the hive, honey 

 gets its characteristic flavor to a greater 

 extent than is possible in evaporation 

 outside of the hive. 



There have been several machines de- 

 vised for the artificial ripening of hon- 

 ey which has been extracted "green," 

 that is, with too great a water content. 

 The principle on which all of these are 

 constructed is the application of heat, 

 not to exceed 160 degrees F., for a suf- 

 ficient time to reduce the amount of 

 water present to about 20 percent. 

 Either sun heat or artificial heat may 

 be used. In the western part of the 

 United States honey may be, and usual- 

 ly is, extracted before it is all capped, 

 because it is the general practice of 

 bee-keepers to run the honey directly 

 from the extractor to large tanks, some- 

 times holding several tons, out in the 

 open, covered with porous cloth tightly 

 tied down to exclude bees. Many of 

 these tanks are contracted at the top, 

 leaving only a comparatively small op- 

 ening. On account of the extreme dry- 

 ness of the atmosphere and total lack 

 of rain during the dry season, this par- 

 tial evaporation outside of the hive takes 

 place very rapidly. 



The advocates of ripening outside of 

 the hive argue that, if honey is extract- 

 ed before all the water is removed 

 from it, the bees have less to do in- 

 side of the hive and can devote almost 

 all of their time to gathering nectar in 

 the field. This obviously would result 

 in an increased amount of nectar, and, 

 consequently, provided the forage will 

 produce it, in an increased amount of 

 honey. They argue that it is impossible 



to detect any difference between honey 

 ripened inside of the hive and that rip- 

 ened outside, as far as flavor is con- 

 cerned, but this is a point on which 

 many other bee-keepers and experts in 

 honey-tasting do not agree with them. 

 It must be admitted that, for general 

 sale, the delicate aromas of well-rip- 

 ened honey are not necessary, since the 

 purchasing public is, as a rule, not edu- 

 cated on this point; but it certainly 

 pays to produce the very best article 

 possible for the further education of 

 the trade, and, therefore, a thorough 

 ripening inside of the hive is very much 

 preferable. To insure this, it is better 

 to tier up the hives rather than extract 

 as soon as a hive-body is full. 



On all honeys, after extraction, if 

 allowed to stand in a vessel, a scum will 

 rise to the top, made up of impurities, 

 such as wax, brood, dead bees, and par- 

 ticles of dirt which may get into it. 

 This is particularly the case with hon- 

 eys which are extracted when not thor- 

 oughly ripened. In all cases honey 

 should be strained as it leaves the ex- 

 tractor and subsequently skimmed until 

 no further impurities come to the top. 

 It is frequently the practice to draw 

 honey from the bottom of the tank in 

 which the honey is stored, through a 

 "honey-gate," so that the impurities do 

 not get into the smaller receptacles in 

 which the honey is to be packed. 



The thorough ripening of honey can- 

 not be too strongly recommended. Hon- 

 ey attracts moisture, and there is al- 

 ways a tendency for a very thin layer 

 to form on the top of the honey in 

 which the water content is very high. 

 In such a film the amount of sugar is 

 low, the acetic-acid-forming bacteria 

 can grow rapidly and the honey becomes 

 sour. In thoroughly ripened honey, it 

 is very probable that a film of thinner 

 honey is always present, but, in such 

 a case, the sugar content is so high that 

 the bacteria cannot grow. 



It is desirable that honeys from dif- 

 ferent sources be kept separate as far 

 as possible if the product is to be used 

 for the bottling trade. This can he 

 done only by extracting at the close 

 of each honey-flow. While it is prob- 

 ably impossible to get a honey from 

 only one species of plant, except under 

 the most abnormal circumstances, at the 

 same time honey may generally be re- 

 moved at the close of each flow so that 

 the total quantity will have the charac- 

 teristic flavor imparted by a single kind 

 of flower. 



The Granulation of Honey. 



Almost all honeys granulate or "can- 

 dy" after a certain time, and may be- 

 come solid. This phenomenon varies 

 greatly in different honeys. For e.xam- 

 ple, alfalfa honey produced in Colorado 

 will often granulate solid within a few 

 weeks from the time it is extracted; 

 while the white sage honey of^ southern 

 California will often remain liquid and 

 entirely clear of crystal for two years 

 and often longer, if properly piit up. 

 The reason for this difference in the 

 time of granulation will be discussed 

 under the heading of "Types of Honey." 

 Honey from the same species of plant 

 varies somewhat in different localities. 



