27! 



THE AMERICAN APICULTURIST. 



are, the grape sugar of honey being 

 at once fit for assimilation, .whereas 

 cane-sugar (one has noticed how the 

 eating of sweets increases thirst !) 

 calls on a laggard saliva to convert 

 it into grape-sugar, and rests in nooks 

 and corners among the teeth, fit 

 food and breeding-ground for caries, 

 schizom3'cetes, sphseromycetes, and 

 what not, which turn it into acid, the 

 said acid acting upon the lime of the 

 teeth and dissolving them. Because 

 cheap cane-sugars have been taken 

 into the stomach in unreasonable 

 quantity, the liver has been unable to 

 transform them, the result being the 

 disordering of both organs. Dyspepsia 

 and biliousness are probably caused 

 more by the use of cane-sugar than 

 most of us think, indeed, an author- 

 ity (Mr. F. Cheshire) tells us that if 

 cane-sugar be injected into the blood, 

 it is at once excreted, which is not 

 the case with grape sugar. Let us 

 then remember that it is only grape- 

 sugar which the system can at once 

 use as heat-giving, fattening food, and 

 this it is which honey supplies ready 

 prepared for us by the bee in Nature's 

 laboratory. Honey will carry along 

 with itself into the stomach for diges- 

 tion more bread (starch, etc.) than 

 butter will, each helping the other ; 

 and a pound of honey at 8d. or gd, 

 per lb. will consequently go as far as 

 2 lbs. of butter, costing 3s. Here 

 there is decided economy. It can 

 be used for almost every purpose we 

 now use sugar for : and by the prin- 

 ciples of modern beekeeping, it is 

 becoming more plentiful and cheaper 

 year by year. A great objection to 

 its free use in past years was its com- 

 parative high price, owing to the re- 

 stricted supply caused by the annual 

 destruction of bees. This is now re- 

 moved. Another serious objection 

 vfa.% the fact that honey disagreed 

 with many people. The wonder is 

 that it agreed with any one, for a 

 common way of obtaining it (after 

 smothering the bees) was to cut out 

 the combs containing young bees 



and pollen, besides honey, and 

 squeeze the whole in a cloth, strain- 

 ing the result for use. It will thus 

 be easily seen, without entering into 

 details, how much objectionable mat- 

 ter was thus imported into the honey 

 which would tend to disorder delicate 

 stomachs. All this is now changed. 

 No brood (young bees) is now al- 

 lowed by the beekeeper to be 

 hatched in the clean, snow-white 

 sections of white basswood we see 

 in the shop-windows of fruiterers and 

 grocers who sell the honey, the whole 

 of which honey and comb may be 

 spread on bread and eaten, the cells 

 being so thin that it takes six cell-walls 

 to equal the thickness of a sheet of 

 ordinary note paper. — Exchange. 



Q UES TIOXS A XD A NS WEBS. . 



QUKSrrON BY ONE OF THE UEADKUS 



OF THE "API." 



SIZE AND SHAPE OF THE BKOOD- 



CH AMBER. 



Will you set Mr. Doolittle or some 

 oue who has had as much experience 

 in bee culture to answer the following 

 question : 



1. What shape and size should the 

 brood-chamber be in order to obtain tlie 

 best results in points of wintering, 

 honey-storing and liandling tlie combs 

 when extracting? 



ANSWER BY G. M. DOOLITTLE. 



To best give my views on this 

 question, I wiUtell the "readers of the 

 Api" how I have been led along until 

 I have adopted what I now use, and 

 have been using steadily for the past 

 ten years, in the way of brood-cham- 

 bers. When I first began beekeep- 

 ing some seventeen or eighteen 

 years ago, I used the regular Lang- 

 stroth hive, holding ten frames. Soon 

 after I got acquainted (by letter) with 

 E. Gallup of Iowa, and from what he 

 taught me by letter and through his 

 article published in the Ain.BeeJotir- 

 nal I was led to try some of his hives 

 by the side of the Langstroth hive, 

 which I was using. During the first 



