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AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



Nov. 23 1899. 



plorer said, " If the hand fail I fall into the abyss below. 

 Xot to go forward will lose to me the sights for which I 

 came." Assuringly the guide said, "That hand never lost 

 a man." 



I fear I have not made this as plain as I might. I have 

 tried, but fear I have failed thru my inability to express 

 myself, but to him that hath "a little strength" the Master 

 saith, "He that sliutteth and no man openeth, and He that 

 openeth and no man shutteth," "because thou hast 

 " a little strength, behold / have set before thee an open 

 door, and no man can shut it." 



In conclusion, allow me to say that that hand — that all- 

 powerful hand of the Master — coupled with our hands hav- 

 ing a little apicultural strength — "that hand never lost a 

 man .'" G. M. Doowttle. 



Following the address by Mr. Doolittle, Prof. H. W. 

 Wiley, chief chemist for the United States Department of 

 Agriculture, Washington, D. C, spoke as follows on 



Food Value of Honey— Its Adulteration and Analyses. 



A great poet, as well as one who had a keen insight into 

 tlie scientific laws of nature, said, about one hundred years 

 ago, in language which I shall venture to translate — 



*' He who knows not all that has happened 

 In three thousand j-ears, will never 

 See the light nor have experience 

 Even should he live forever." 



This statement of Goethe is true, also, in matters con- 

 nected with honey. 



It seems to me, therefore, in discussing the subject of 

 honey as a food, that it would be wise to go back over the 

 pages of history and see what uses were made of this sub- 

 stance during the past three thousand years, or even longer. 

 If you will indulg-e me, therefore, I will preface what I have 

 to say by a few extracts taken from historical pages, relat- 

 ing to honey and its uses. We ought to know what has 

 been done in three thousand years, but I do not propose to 

 take three thousand minutes to tell you. 



Early History. — The tribes of men that live solely, or 

 almost so, on flesh use neither salt nor sweets. The transi- 

 tion from flesh-eating to plant-eating in the early history 

 of all nations is attended with the consumption of salt and 

 sweets. The word sweet is common to all dominant lan- 

 guages. In Sanscrit it first occurs, thousands of years old, 

 as svadu, to make sweet ; ydus, Greek ; snovis, Latin, etc. 

 The use of honey in early historical times was connected 

 with religious rites, chiefly because the fermented honey- 

 water was supposed to contain a spirit powerful, and need- 

 ing to be propitiated. 



Wine or beer made from honey was known in the ear- 

 liest historical times, known in Sanskrit as niadhn, and in 

 Greek as »ieu, and in German as ineth. 



Bee-culture was unknown to many early nations which 

 valued wild honey. It is evident that Homer would have 

 mentioned bee-culture had it been known to the Greeks in 

 his time. Homer frequently mentions honey and its uses, 

 but never suggests that men have anything to do with its 

 production. Homer, in the 9th book of the Odyssej', calls 

 wine the " the red honey of the grape." A " land full of 

 honey " to the ancient writers did not mean the ideal land 

 full of milk and honey, but a wilderness where the bees 

 workt undisturbed in accumulating their stores. 



While some attempts were made before the Christian 

 era to increase the production of honey by man's aid, no 

 true system of bee-culture can be said to have existed 2,000 

 years ago. This is plainly evident from a perusal of that 

 book of the Georgics devoted by Virgil to bees and honej*. 

 During Pliny's life (died 79, A. D.) men learned to build 

 rude hives, and even placed in them windows of isinglass in 

 order to watch the bees at their work. Pliny had some re- 

 markable ideas in regard to the propagation of bees. He 

 states that if the carcasses of j'oung steers be covered with 

 dung, Nature will change a portion of the steer's body into 

 bees. (Book XI.) This idea probably arose from the fable 

 of Aristous, the first bee-keeper who helpt to compass the 

 death of Eurydice. He was punisht for this by having 

 taken from him all his bees. He was advised by Proteus 

 to supplicate the gods in a sacrifice of bullocks. He was 

 delighted to see arise from their carcasses a new supply of 

 bees. 



Aristotle, who lived 350 years B. C, states that the 

 bees make the wax, but gather the honey from Heaven — 

 dew. Even up to the time of Virgil, and after, the ancient 

 writers had no notion of the existence of sugar in flowers, 

 but the honey gathered by the bees was supposed to be a 



direct gift of Heaven, or, as Virgil describes it, " That gift 

 of Heaven, ethereal honey." 



The use of honej' in baking is mentioned in the 7th 

 century B. C. At the time of Aristophones the use of honey 

 in the bakeries of Athens was quite common. (444 B. C.) 

 The Athenian honey was very costly. • Aristophones says, 

 "I beg thee, friend, use some other honey, spare the Attic 

 which costs four crowns.'" 



Xenophon mentions a poisonous honey which made 

 many of his soldiers ill. Investigations in late years, of 

 honeys produced in the locality described bj' Xenophon, 

 show that this poisonous principle is derived from the Jim- 

 son-weed (Datura stramoniun), of whose flowers the bees 

 are very fond. 



In Rome in the earliest times honey was very costly, 

 and it was used onlj' in religious ceremonies and as a medi- 

 cine. It was supposed to have valuable healing powers. It 

 was only about 170 B. C. that it became cheap enough to be 

 used in baking. 



In Caesar's time honey was used to a considerable ex- 

 tent. Vejanus, a bee-keeper near Falerimer, is said by 

 Varro to have sold annually 10,000 sesterces worth (S6S0) of 

 honej' from a flower-garden of about one acre in extent. 

 His bees probably poacht on his neighbors" preserves. 



During the empire, honey merchants and bakers were 

 found in all parts of Rome, and poultry intended for the 

 rich were fattened on honey and ground cereals. 



During this period, also, the preservation of fruits in 

 honey was first practiced, and the foundations of a great 

 modern industry laid. The preserving power of honey, 

 however, was not discovered bj' the Romans, for Herodotus, 

 who lived nearly 500 B. C, says that dead bodies in East- 

 ern countries were preserved from decay by honey and wax. 

 It is said that the body of Agesipolis, king of Sparta, 

 was preserved and sent home in this manner. 



The Egyptians fed their sacred animals, e. g., the croco- 

 dile, goose-flesh and honey-cakes, and pictures more than 

 4,000 years old of bees have been found in Egyptian 

 antiquities. It seems probable, therefore, that the Egyp- 

 tians were the first to gather honey. 



Especially as a medicine honey was largely used in 

 Egypt. In an old Egyptian writing, at least 1500 B. C, 

 have been found numerous recipes for remedies in which 

 honey plays the most important part. 



Hippocrates, the celebrated Grecian physician, who 

 lived 450 B. C, describes many remedies in which honey 

 was the chief ingredient, and ascribed to it remarkable 

 curative properties. An ancient fable recites that in thank- 

 fulness the bees constructed a hive on his grave, and that 

 honey of miraculous healing properties was produced therein. 

 Deraocritus, who was contemporarj' with Hippocrates, 

 and who lived to be more than a hundred years old, when 

 askt how to attain so green an old age, replied, " Honey 

 within, oil without." 



Many curious theories were developt in respect of the 

 curative powers of honey and wine — not perhaps any more 

 absurd than many of the so-called medical theories in vogue 

 at the present time. 



Macrobius, 400 A. D., explained the healing power of 

 the mixture by saying that the old wine by reason of its 

 moist nature was warming, while the honey, by reason of 

 its dry nature, was cooling. Pliny, on the other hand, 

 ascribed the good effects to the property of honey which 

 prevents decay. 



The early Christian era saw a great impulse given to 

 the production of honey. The souls of the- dead were repre- 

 sented as flying to Heaven in the form of bees. Honey be- 

 came of more general use, and the wax was made into can- 

 dles for religious uses. The discovery of paraffine has ren- 

 dered less effective the old Christian legend that God blest 

 the bees as they were sent from Paradise, and that as a con- 

 sequence no mass should be said without beeswax candles. 

 Bee-culture spread with great rapidity over Europe dur- 

 ing the first millennium of the Christian era. In Spain 

 honey became an article of export in the early centuries. 

 The tithes of the church were paid in honey in many places. 

 In Saxony honey and honey-bees were so abundant that a 

 fire in Messina was extinguisht with honey-bees in lOlS. 

 Nuremberg, however, seems to have been the chief center 

 of the German bee-industry. In Russia, Poland and Lithu- 

 ania immense quantities of honey were produced at this 

 time. A king of one of the Russian provinces was said to 

 have given to the poor honey and honey-wine, while he 

 himself lived on mare's milk. 



In the old Indian writings honey is frequently men- 

 tioned. The new-bcirn child was welcomed with a religious 

 ceremonial in which honey was the chief material em- 



