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THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



The Purity of Honey. 



Mr. J. O. Todd, Richmond, Iowa, 

 writes us as follows : 



I wish you would inform us, through 

 the Bee Journal, what constitutes 

 pure honey. I have a large crop of 

 honey this year, and some of the in- 

 credulous have said it must be adul- 

 terated. I know it is not ; and when 

 I have good authority as to the ingre- 

 dients of pure honey, I wish to have 

 mine analyzed and prove to the unbe- 

 lievers that a large crop of honey is 

 but the honest reward of the modern 

 system of bee-keeping. 



Honey is a substance so well known 

 that it would seem almost a waste of 

 space to describe it ; and yet there are 

 many things about its composition 

 that are so varied by locality and the 

 bloom from which it is obtained, 

 which are generally unknown, that it 

 may be well to answer the above ques- 

 tion rather in detail. 



Honey is solely a vegetable product, 

 not made, but gathered from the nec- 

 tar of flowers, where it is secreted in 

 fine weather according to the rules of 

 Nature's laboratory. Each flower 

 yields honey of its own peculiar flavor, 

 which, if not gathered, is soon evap- 

 orated and lost. 



Honey, fresh from the comb,is clear, 

 translucent, slightly amber-colored, 

 and viscous, becoming granular in 

 time, with whitish, transparent crys- 

 tals. In taste and smell, it is sweet, 

 agreeable and aromatic. It should 

 not irritate the throat when eaten, 

 and its peculiar flavor should be so 

 decided, that it can be readily de- 

 tected when mixed with other articles 

 of diet. 



Honey derived from the blossoms of 

 cruciferous plants, granulates or crys- 

 tallizes speedily— often, indeed, while 

 yet in the comb, before removal 

 from tlip hive ; while that from labiate 

 plants, and from fruit trees in general, 

 maintains its original condition un- 

 changed for several months, after be- 

 ing extracted from the comb. Honey 

 produced ,in northern climates like- 

 wise crystallizes sooner than that from 

 southern countries. 



"Under the microscope," says the 

 Druggists'' Advertiser, " the solid part 

 of honey is seen to consist of myriads 

 of regularly-formed crystals ; these 

 crystals are for the most part exceed- 

 ingly thin and transparent, and very 

 brittle, so that many of them are 

 broken and imperfect ; but when en- 

 tire, they consist of six-sided prisms, 

 apparently identical in form with 

 those of cane sugar. It is probable, I 



however, that these represent the 

 crystals of dextrose, as they occur in 

 honeys from which cane sugar is 

 nearly or wholly absent. Intermingled 

 with the crystals may also be seen 

 pollen granules of different forms, 

 sizes and structure, often in such per- 

 fect condition that they may be re- 

 ferred to the particular plant from 

 which the juices have been gath- 

 ered." 



The Rev. L. L. Langstroth remarks 

 that "honey and sugar contain, by 

 weight, about eight pounds of oxygen 

 to one of carbon and hydrogen." 



The chemical properties of honey 

 are as varied as the sources from 

 which it is obtained : and therefore it 

 would be difiicult to give any univer- 

 sal rule to prove the query propounded 

 by our correspondent, viz.: "What 

 constitutes pure honey V " 



Prof. Kedzie, of the Michigan Agri- 

 cultural College, has written an article 

 on this subject which we will append, 

 as it is very pertinent to the subject. 

 It is as follows : 



Honey is one of the oldest things 

 under the sun. At one time it was 

 probably the only form of sugar 

 known, and to-day is one of our most 

 delicious articles of food. Does it not 

 seem strange, then, that in this scien- 

 tiflc age so little is known of its real 

 composition or the changes it under- 

 goes ? Honey is composed of grape 

 and sugar cane, together with water, 

 acid and waxy matters. If honey be 

 burned completely, a grayish colored 

 ash remains, which amounts to about 

 fifteen per cent, of the original honey. 

 In this ash I succeeded in obtaining 

 reactions for silica, lime and iron. 

 There is also a small quantity of pot- 

 ash and phosphoric acid in honey. To 

 estimate the quantity of these present 

 I took two portions of "cap" honey, 

 free from pollen and wax, and burned 

 them to a coal-like mass. In one I 

 extracted the potash with muriatic 

 acid, and in the other, phosphoric acid 

 with nitric acid, and estimated them 

 in the usual manner. 



The following are the amounts ob- 

 tained: Potash .06 per cent.; phos- 

 phoric acid .08 per cent. These sub- 

 stances would naturally be present in 

 honey, as they are found in soils, and 

 circulate in the juices of plants. 

 There are many things connected with 

 honey about which, at the present 

 time, but little is known. The follow- 

 ing are a few : 



1. Has honey a definite composi- 

 tion? Is there any difference between 

 tlie relative amount of sugar in honey 

 made from buckwheat, basswood, 

 clover, goldenrod, brown sugar, etc., 

 or between the relative amounts of 

 cane and grape sugarV Probably this 

 question can be answered only by 

 comparing the analysis of different 

 kinds of honey. 



2. Does the bee add anything to 

 nectar in changing it into honey? On 



this point there is wide difference of 

 opinion. But I know of no experi- 

 ments having been tried to settle the 

 matter. Perfectly pure honey, that 

 has been dried completely, contains 

 about one per cent, of nitrogen. Does 

 the bee supply this nitrogenous mat- 

 ter ? To decide this I gathered some 

 nectar from flowers in the Agricul- 

 tural College green-house (from the 

 azalia, rhododendron, and fuchsia, 

 but principally from the last), and 

 carefully tested it for nitrogen. The 

 result of my experiments is that nec- 

 tar does contain traces of nitrogen. 

 Therefore, the fact that honey con- 

 tains nitrogen does not prove that it 

 was furnished by the bee. May not 

 this question be decided by feeding 

 bees upon pure white sugar, which 

 contains no nitrogen, and afterward 

 examine the honey to see if any nitro- 

 genous matter has been added to it? 



3. After honey has staid for a cer- 

 tain length of time, a part of the grape 

 sugar crystallizes out, and granulation 

 or candying is the result. The cause 

 of this change is not known. May not 

 the conditions under which granula- 

 tion occurs be obtained by a series of 

 experiments, by keeping honey at dif- 

 ferent temperatures, etc. ? Answers 

 to these questions may not advance 

 the market a particle, but we shall 

 enjoy the satisfaction of knowing the 

 truth of the whole matter. 



I®" In the Bee Journal, page 662, 

 at the bottom of the second column, 

 Mr. J. M. Hicks was made to say he 

 " had averaged 500 lbs. of honey per 

 colony, from alsike clover," in the re- 

 port of the National Convention. It 

 should have read that " Mr. Hicks said 

 that alsike clover, in a good season, 

 would yield 500 lbs. of honey per acre." 

 In writing us of this error, Mr. Hicks 

 adds: "I obtained 718 lbs. of ex- 

 tracted honey from one colony of 

 Holy Land bees." So that he has 

 even surpassed the amount, in one in- 

 stance at least, stated in the paragraph 

 on page 662. Mr. Hicks adds : " Bees 

 have done splendidly here during the 

 latter part of August and all of Sep- 

 tember." 



Preparation of Honey for the Mar- 

 ket, including the production and care 

 of both comb and extracted honey, 

 instructions on the exhibition of bees 

 and honey at Fairs, etc. This is a 

 new 10 cent pamphlet, of 32 pages. 



1^ We will send Cook's Manual 

 in cloth, or an Apiary Register for 100 

 colonies, and Weekly Bee Journal 

 for one year, for $3.00 ; or with King's 

 Text-Book, in cloth, for $2.75 ; or with 

 Bees and Honey, in cloth, $2.50. The 

 Monthly Bee Journal and either of 

 the above for one dollar less. 



