TEE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



mand, is not a matter for us to dogmatize 

 about. Our rightful business is to experi- 

 ment and find out. What I said I was not 

 sure of amounts to this. Is the water of 

 very thick honey (twelve per cent, some one 

 says), plus the necessary loss by the read- 

 justment of the three elements named, 

 greater in the aggregate than the loss thin 

 molasses sustains when being boiled into 

 candy ? Were honey and wax definite com- 

 pounds the matter would be easier to get at; 

 but neither is so. Three different waxes, in 

 varying quantities, each with a different 

 proportion of carbon, oxygen and hydrogen, 

 are bound together in beeswax. As to honey, 

 if I am right, science cannot yet tell cer- 

 tainly how many different sugars there are 

 in it. The proportions of each vary greatly 

 in different samples. I may as well confess 

 I had not in mind how large a sacrifice of 

 oxygen was necessary in transforming honey 

 to wax. There are some indications that 

 the actual secretion of wax is from the cane 

 sugar which abounds in fresh nectar, but is 

 hardly found at all in ripe honey. In 100 

 lbs. of cane sugar there are over 42 lbs. car- 

 bon, over 51 lbs. of oxygen, and nearly (>3^ 

 lbs. of hydrogen. In 100 lbs. of wax, as per 

 Cook's Manual (whether from a single sam- 

 ple, or an average of several samples I can- 

 not say), there are over 79 lbs. of carbon, 

 over 13 lbs. of hydrogen, and of oxygen only 

 83^. So the necessary loss of substance ap- 

 proximates to one-half, exclusive of the 

 water. 



But how about friend Dadant's chemistry? 

 He says : " Beeswax is no more honey than 

 the fat of a hog is corn." Beeswax and 

 honey have identical ingredients. Corn and 

 lard have not. A considerable part of the 

 corn is not nutriment at all. Another con- 

 siderable part is nutriment with nitrogen in 

 it, and therefore of doubtful avail in making 

 lard which has no nitrogen. 



Hearty thanks for the concession of seven 

 pounds instead of twenty. " The world does 

 move." The former figure will not, like the 

 latter, impel every beginner to think every 

 ounce of foundation he can make his bees 

 use must be used at a profit, whether he can 

 see any profit or not. Now give us the bet- 

 ter conditions of fresh natural nectar instead 

 of old honey, or concocted feed, a natural 

 sivarm of bees instead of a disgruntled old 

 colony, mid-season instead of the time of 

 year when bees are becoming semi-torpid, 

 and liberty, and then we shall all get on 



further, little by little, clear to the ultimate 

 truth that there is, practically, no mysteri- 

 ous loss at all. 



Mr. Dadant says my bees remained idle in 

 the hive to hold honey. Let us see. Please 

 confine attention for the moment to the ex- 

 periment which gave the best results. These 

 are the four days' gatherings. First day, 5 

 oz.; 2d, 5 oz.; iJd, 22 oz.; 4th, IG oz. The 

 third and fourth days there was, no doubt, 

 comb to put the honey in. If there was any 

 staying at homo to hold honey it must have 

 been the first or second days. Does not Mr. 

 D. know that a four pound natural swarm 

 has young bees enough, that do not yet go to 

 the fields, to hold a great deal more than five 

 ounces of honey ? and that the field bees 

 prefer to give it to them, even if there was 

 ever so much empty comb ? He knows 

 these things very well indeed. He seems to 

 be objecting without paying any careful 

 heed to the matter before him. Moreover, 

 notice the queer mathematics by which he 

 makes the experiment support the 7 to 1 

 ratio. I said my experimental bees lost 

 weight, four ounces each night, on the aver- 

 age, and that I equally divided this between 

 food and wax. He says, " If bees consume 

 two and a half ounces of honey during 

 the eight hours of a July night, &c." 

 This is not a slip of the pen, or a typograph- 

 ical error, for he directly multiplies it by 3 

 and makes 7}4 the product. Now, why does 

 Mr. Dadant, one of the ripest practical 

 apiarians in this or any country, deliver 

 such wild blows ? A charitable theory oc- 

 curs to me that he went over the experiment 

 with some approach to care years ago, and 

 that he now sets his conclusions before us in 

 a mixed and half-remembered state. 



But, to return, there is a real difficulty at 

 this point, on account of honey that escapes 

 the scale, by being gathered in the morning 

 and digested before night. My critic says, 

 " Mr. Hasty forgets." How did I forget? 

 By expressly stating in these plain words — 

 Some honey gathered at morn is eaten and 

 dissipated before night, and so escapes the 

 scale, while the wax product of it remains. 

 To balance this, on the other hand, all 

 these pounds and ounces are pounds and 

 ounces of rather raw nectar, not of ripe 

 honey." Now, it was open to Mr. Dadant 

 to say, if he chose, that I did not make al- 

 lowance enough for digestion by day. He 

 might even object to the whole plan of off- 

 setting one thing against another. But to 



