THE BEEKEEPERS' REVIEW. 



319 



no sliow at all for the dictum, " Bees do not 

 make honey." 



I am not, however, eufjaged in a mere 

 strife about words and terms. I wish to 

 carry the war much farther into benighted 

 Africa of book-beedom aiul re-open practical 

 (luestions as to what is desirable, and what 

 is honest. It is not honest to sell your 

 neighbor honey from the sugar barrel while 

 you cause him to think he is buying liotiey 

 from the flowers. But it is honest if you 

 say to him, " Here is golden-rod honey for 

 ten cents a pound; and here, at eleven cents 

 a pound, is honey I got by feeding syrup last 

 July." If he likes the looks of the fed honey 

 best, likes the taste of it best, and takes it 

 deliberately at a higher price, there is in 

 such a transaction no dishonesty. I am not 

 talking from practice, for I never fed sugar 

 except to supply tlie wauts of the bees, ( and 

 all I ever fed for that purpose would not 

 aggregate fifty pounds), but I think I know 

 how some things would work. I feel sure 

 that the article in question is essentially 

 honey, and that customers who have confi- 

 dence in a bee keeper, upon having the mat- 

 ter fully explained to them, would readily 

 buy it. 



Now, as to the cause of the established 

 errors. Writers do not set forth absurd fal- 

 lacies just from the love of falsehood. Ex- 

 cepting by queen breeders, little sugar has 

 ever been fed other than to furnish poverty 

 stricken bees with food for winter. This 

 work is done in September, sometimes later. 

 The business is rushed by feeding the syrup 

 warm, and putting it inside the hive; making 

 them take, say twenty-four pounds in forty- 

 eight hours. The bees, having been mainly 

 idle for weeks, are not in condition to furnish 

 any considerable amount of secretions. As 

 they never fly with it at all their bodies are 

 not fully inflated with air: and consequently 

 they are not in normal honey-making trim. 

 The semi-dormant state comes on soon after 

 the job of moving it is finished. Small won- 

 der, then, that any time during the fall or 

 winter the syrup may be found in the combs 

 only slightly changed from its condition be- 

 fore feeding. Now what does this prove ? 

 What should any reflective man say that it 

 proves? Only that bees <•««, when pressed 

 to it by abnormal conditions, move syrup 

 from feeder to comb witliout transforming 

 it. Feed it to them in -Tuly when they are . 

 "up and shaved; " feed ff)ur pounds a day 

 instead of twelve pounds a day; make them 



fly at least h If a mile with it, and they will 

 make it into honey. 



From what I have seen, and what I have 

 read, and what I have "smelt," I think I 

 can say with tolerable certainty this much 

 more. Your twenty-four pounds of syrup is 

 practically all cane sugar and water. After 

 being fed in the natural way indicated, and 

 sealed up, there will not be a <iuarter of a 

 pound of cane sugar in the whole of it— all 

 transformed into some other of the sugar 

 series. In what essential respect does this 

 dififer from the making of cider into vinegar? 

 When practically all the spirit in cider is 

 transformed into acid, what sense in saying, 

 " The man did not make vinegar — he only 

 poured cider into your jug, and it is cider 

 still?" Fed honey will differ from clover 

 honey as clover honey differs from golden- 

 rod, and both differ from aphide honey; but 

 all the same each is an actual member of the 

 honey family. Whether we want the article 

 or not must be determined, not by telling 

 fibs about it, but by the circumstances, the 

 condition of the honey market, and by a fair 

 consideration of the probable results of such 

 a new departure. Some unjust suspicions 

 will be caused ; and the extracted honey 

 market may be unsettled to some extent ; 

 nevertheless it may yet be the best road out 

 of our difldculties. 



People want comb honey to ornament the 

 tea table. That obtained by feeding is not 

 likely to be any less an ornament. The 

 healing and health giving quality of honey 

 (and quite possibly this is very great, far be- 

 yond the ordinary estimate) seems to result 

 mainly from the secretions the bees mingle 

 with it. The battle of life and death with 

 them, as with us, is a battle against micro- 

 scopic germs, and they seem to conduct it by 

 fortifying their food with antiseptic secre- 

 tions. It is reasonable to suppose that they 

 will put about the same amount of their 

 peculiar secretion in fed honey as in floral 

 honey, if the feeding is not hurried, and the 

 conditions are natural. Then if we get the 

 beauty, and the goodness and the healthful- 

 ness of honey, what more do we want? 

 There is this much of doubt that may be 

 thrown in. Much of the natural material 

 they have to make up is of [)Oor quality, and 

 would soon spoil, we may surmise, if not 

 largely fortified by secretions. Bees may 

 have Ijoth the taste and disposition to use 

 much or little of their saving elixirs, accord- 

 ing to what must be used to preserve the 



