i'HE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



421 



©avvcsp^oudeucc. 



Thl a mar k © indicate8 thatthe apiarist js 

 located near tnc cenior of tbe~StSe named; 

 6 north of the center; 9 south; O* east; 

 ♦Owest; and this (^ northeast; "o northwest: 

 0» southeast; and P southwest of the center 

 of the State mentioned. 



For the American Bee JonmaJL 



"LW or"Eitractefl" Houey, 



G. W. DEMAREE. 



Allow me to say that the editorial 

 on page 291, couceming my answer to 



Query 415, hardly does me justice. 

 The question was about " extracted 

 honey," and I simply gave my experi- 

 ence and views on the subject. Cer- 

 tainly the language used in that place 

 cannot be fairly construed as being a 

 proposition on my part to substitute 

 the word "liquid" for "extracted." 

 I only say that having found the 

 name " extracted " in my way in 

 making sale of honey, I " now call it 

 liquid honey." 



But now since the question has 

 been raised as to whether the name 

 " extracted," as applied to honey out 

 ofthecmnh, is or is not a " misnomer," 

 I wish to call attention to the fact 

 that honey has been sold largely on 

 the markets under the name " ex- 

 tracted honey " for 8 or 10 years, and 

 yet the name " extracted honey " has 

 been all these years almost, if not en- 

 tirely, ignored outside of the honey- 

 producers, and a few large honey- 

 dealers. This ought to settle the 

 matter as to the question of misnomer. 

 The word " extracts," in commer- 

 cial parlance, never applies to a sim- 

 ?le article of food. The people are 

 ully aware of this, and they are 

 guided by simple reason and common- 

 sense when they " want none of vour 

 ' extract ' (of ) honey." 



I am not prepared to suggest an 

 unobjectionable name for honey out 

 of the comb, but I have found that 

 when I speak of it as "liquid honey," 

 I am promptly understood by my 

 customers, and this saves me from 

 a world of worrysome explanation. 

 Honey, in its natural state, is a liquid. 

 It never granulates in a temperature 

 as high as that of the immediate 

 brood-nest. It will never granulate 

 if the place where it is kept has a 

 uniform temperature but a little be- 

 low that of the brood-nest tilled with 

 live bees. The fact is, low tempera- 

 ture is the cause of honey granulat- 

 ing. There has been a jar of honey 

 in our family cook-room for 8 years, 

 and it has never showed any signs of 

 granulation, for the simple reason 

 that this room is kept at a nigh tem- 

 perature the year around. The fact 

 that water will become solid, syrups 

 granulate, and pure honey become 

 semi-solid when subjected to low 

 temperature, seems not to have 

 frightened Webster and other high 

 authorities from speaking of them as 

 liquids, or by other terms equivalent 

 to that. 



While I am persuaded that it would 

 put millions of money into the pock- 

 ets of the honey-producers of this 

 country to drop the misnomer "ex- 

 tracted " for a more appropriate name 

 for the article, I liave little hope that 

 it will ever be done. Prejudice and 

 sentimentality is likely to stand in 

 the way of the correction of even so 

 great a mistake as is the name given 

 to our great staple product of the 

 apiary. 



As a matter of course, practical 

 bee-men know that the name "ex- 

 tracted " refers to the mechanical 

 action employed to draw the liquid 

 honey from the waxen cells, and not 

 to the quality or state of the article. 

 But right here is where the trouble 

 lies — when the name " extracted 

 honey " is mentioned, the bee-man 

 has in his mind mechanical action, 

 but the consumer thinks of nothing 

 but quality or state of the article. 



That shrewd, enterprising honey- 

 dealer, Mr. Chas. F. Muth, detected 

 this serious trouble in the name " ex- 

 tracted " some years ago, and tried to 

 remedy it by adding the word "ma- 

 chine " before " extracted." Thus : 

 "machine extracted honey." 



" Strained honey " is objectionable 

 on account of the impurity of the 

 dirty stuff sold under that name in 

 the olden times. Still it would have 

 been much better to have held on to 

 the old name, depending upon the 

 superior quality of the centrifugal- 

 machine honey, over the old pressing 

 system of freeing the liquid honey 

 from the wax, etc., than to have 

 adopted a name that a majority of 

 consumers treat with contempt. I 

 shall call it " liquid honey " until 

 some one gives us a better name. 



Christiausburg,5 Ky. 



[True, Bro. Demaree, the word ex- 

 tracted is objectionable, as we stated 

 on page 291. We want abetter name, 

 and must discuss the appropriateness 

 of such names as are used, whether 

 proposed or not ! Liquid is not the 

 word— will not be acceptable— and 

 will not be adopted. Bro. Demaree, 

 will you please give us something 

 better, and then we will give you in 

 return a rousing " vote of thanks." 

 We want a change— but it must be 

 for the better.— Ed.] 



For the American Bee Journal. 



No Coinl] Foimdalion in Sections, 



W. Z. HUTCntNSON. 



Since the publication of my article 

 on page 341,1 have received quite a 

 number of letters upon the subject. 

 In one of them the writer, Mr. J. 

 Tomlinson, of Allegan, Mich., re- 

 marks as follows : 



" What you say about foundation 

 in comb honey is in accordance with 

 my views. I have never used full, 

 sheets of foundation in sections, only 

 starters from 1 inch to 1^ inches in 



width, yet I find tiiat this tough cen- 

 tre of ' leather ' seems to extend down 

 tlirough the whole comb. I have 

 often heard Mr. T. F. Bingham say, 

 when dilating upon the beauty and 

 excellence of honey comb, ' Ttiat as 

 melted butter is only grease, so 

 melted honey-comb is only wax, and 

 not fit for food.' So I think you are 

 doing a good work to raise the note 

 of warning, that in the strife after 

 quantity we are likely to sacrifice 

 quality 



" I would like to get rid of founda- 

 tion in sections altogether. How 

 would a starter of wood answer y Say 

 we cut a thin saw-kerf in the centre 

 of the top end of the wide pieces of 

 the sections, deep enough so that a 

 thin wood-starter could be slipped in 

 just under the top piece, the starter 

 to be say three-sixteenths of an inch 

 wide, and one-thirty-second of an 

 inch thick. To make sure that the 

 bees would build on them, they might 

 be waxed and run through a founda- 

 tion mill. The only objection that I 

 can see would be that these starters 

 would be a little in the way when cut- 

 ting the honey from the sections." 



A bee-keeper in Texas sent me a 

 sample of foundation made from wax 

 that is naturally white. It is made 

 from cat's-claw honey. He argues 

 that the use of such foundation would 

 remove the objectionable yellow color. 

 True ; but we cannot all secure foun- 

 dation of this cat's-claw honey wax, 

 and even if we could, we must re- 

 member that, " as melted butter is 

 only grease, so melted honey-comb is 

 only wax." I think this comparison 

 of Mr. Bingham's is imimitable. We 

 all know that melted butter is grease, 

 and we bee-keepers are equally well 

 aware that when honey-comb has 

 been melted it has lost that tine, deli- 

 cate, flaky, crispy, brittleness ; in 

 short, it is luax, and where is the bee- 

 keeper who cannot detect its presence 

 in the honey he is eating, let it be 

 rolled out ever so thin V I know that 

 Mr. Doolittle reported that he used 

 some foundation so thin that it offered 

 less resistance to a wire thrust 

 through the comb built upon it than 

 did natural comb. But thrusting a 

 wire through a comb of honey is not 

 eating it. " The proof of the jjudding 

 is in the eating." This is the final test 

 to which all edibles must be subjected. 



I have not written all this with the 

 hope that it would induce bee-keepers 

 to give up the use of comb founda- 

 tion in the sections, as I well know 

 that they will not do this unless we 

 can offer some substitute ; but rather 

 with the thought that it may lead 

 them to exercise greater care in 

 securing foundation. So long as we 

 do use foundation in the sections, let 

 us use that made from the cleanest 

 and purest of wax, and that which 

 has the thinnest possible base. In- 

 stead of usiuK wooden starters, as 

 suggested by Mr. T., I would use 

 starters of natural comb. There may 

 be somediffioulty in securing sufiicient 

 natural comb to lill the sections, but 

 enough for stirters can be obtained 

 with no great difficulty. 



Rogersville,(^ Mich. 



