340 



THE BEE-KtJEPERS' HE VIE ^y. 



as. Greiner first utilizes the tossing method. 

 Toss the swarm about in a shallow box till 

 the queen gets a little frightened and she 

 will usually come to the surface and travel 

 for some place with such a spread eagle gait 

 as to be readily seen. If this fails to work, 

 oriffrom plurality of queens the swarm 

 still refuses to go home, he dumps them 

 down, and puts an empty hive on one side 

 of them and the box on the other side. They 

 crawl both ways, and he has another good 

 chance to find queens. At any rate the swarm 

 is put in two divisions, ^nd one of them is 

 pretty sure to get restless soon and begin to 

 fly. At this point the quiet half- is set in 

 the cellar to make it impossible for the fly- 

 ing bees to join them and they will soon 

 locate a hive in the apiary, which Mr. Grei- 

 ner assumes to be the one the swarm issued 

 from. ( Nice if it was always so. ) Last of 

 all the half in the cellar can be returned 

 also. 



Richards, Ohio. Nov. 26, 18%, 



Honey as Food— Why it Should be Eaten. 



It will be remembered that I have several 

 times referred to the subject of a honey 

 leaflet to use in working up a retail trade in 

 honey, and I have copied several sucli into 

 the Review, and promised to finally write one 

 myself. I have had so much work to do 

 during the latter i)art of the summer and 

 have had so many trials and troubles that I 

 could not bring my mind to it. I expect 

 yet to do something in that line. In the 

 meantime, I wish to copy from the Ameri- 

 can Bee Journal an article by Prof. Cook 

 that touches fully upon the dietic value of 

 honey as a food, showing whii it is more 

 desirable than cane sugar. In a leaflet we 

 could not go so much into detail, nor be 

 quite so scientific about it, but the points 

 brought out should be put into as few words 

 as possible, and yet have the meaning per- 

 fectly clear. The Professor snys : — 



"There are four kinds of food that are 

 necessary to health and life. These aretiie 

 inorganic elements, like water, salt, phos- 

 phate and carbonate of lime, etc. : the non- 

 nitrogenous organic — so-called because they 

 owe their origin to organic nature, and con- 

 tain no nitrogen— and the nitrogenous. 

 The second class — the non-nit.rogeuous 

 organic — contain oxygen, hydrogen and 

 carbon, illustrated iu starch, the various 



sugars and the fats. The last class all 

 contain nitrogen, and resemble in many 

 ways the white of an etrg, and so are often 

 called albuminoids. Muscle, white of an 

 egg, cheese, and blood albumen, are illus- 

 trations of the nitrogenous food elements. 

 That we need all of these in our food, is 

 showu iu the fact that we hunger for them if 

 they are not represented, or if they are too 

 scantily represented in our food. Again, 

 milk and egg, which may be regarded as 

 tyoical food, contain all these substances. 



In this article, we are concerned only 

 with the second class of food principles— 

 the non-nitrogenous organic. Of these, the 

 fats do not interest us at present, although 

 important in all food rations. Bees get 

 their albuminous and fatty food elements in 

 the pollen. We thus have before us now 

 only the starch and sugars. These not only 

 contain oxygen, hydrogen, and carbon, 

 but always contain the oxygen and hydro- 

 gen in proportion to form water, that is, 

 two atoms of hydrogen to one of oxygen. 

 Thus the formula for strach is CG HIO 0.5, 

 and of water is Hli O. Glucose and Itevulose, 

 the sugars of honey, have the following for- 

 mula. CG H12 OG. From the fact that starch 

 and sugar contain oxygen and hydrogen in 

 proportion to form water, they are called 

 carbo-hydrates. The carbo-hydrates, then, 

 including starch, and all sugars, as cane sug- 

 ar, which includes beet sugar, and maple 

 sugar, milk sugar, and all the glucose or re- 

 ducing sugars, are very important food ele- 

 ments, so important that we are not left, as 

 in case of most foods, to the chance of se- 

 curing them in our food we eat, but the liver 

 is constantly forming liver sugar, which i^ 

 very much like the sugar of honey. The 

 liver, then, is a marvelous chemist, for it 

 Cauda what no human chemist can do — 

 form suorar, though we only eat the purest 

 muscle, like the beef's heart. To change 

 nitrogenous material into carbo-hydrates, 

 is a wonderful transformation, that man has 

 never yet been able to perform. The liver 

 can, and does, do it. I" our early devolop- 

 ment, before the liver is sufficiently formed 

 to be functionally active, a purely pre-natal 

 organ — the placenta — forms sugar. We all 

 know how children long for candy. This 

 longing voices a need, and is another evi- 

 dence of the importance of sugar in our 

 diet. 



Until a comparatively recent date cane- 

 sugar was unknown, if we except maple 

 sugar, and that must have been a very un- 

 important food article. Thu^, in the olden 

 time honey formed the almost exclusive 

 sugar, and so must have been a very impor- 

 tant substance. We know by the references 

 to it in classic writings, and in the Bible, 

 that it was held in very high regard, as well 

 it might be. for it, with starch, composed the 

 entire stock of carbo-hydrate^ to be drawn 

 upon by the caterer of the olden time, as 

 he worked to satisfy the needs, or, what is 

 about the same thing, the appetites of his 

 patrons. 



I have been told by some excellent physi- 

 cians that they thought that some of the 

 worst diseases of modern times — especially 



