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ILLINOIS STATE BEE-KEEPERS ASSOCIATION 



115 



thing about it, 

 your customer^ 

 tiously taste that 



low the bee up, and he is not a chemist 

 himself. _ . _ 



Mr. Moore — I do not think in his dis- 

 sertation that Mr. Abbott quite covered 

 this case fully. You must go back to 

 the origin. Honey is the nectar of 

 flowers gathered by the bees and stored 

 in the combs. I believe that is where 

 they start. But in order to protect an 

 innocent party whose bees might have 

 gone to the leaves of trees and gotten 

 honey-dew and mixed a small amount 

 with the honey, this small amount is al- 

 lowed. But I think that there will be 

 no trouble about this matter in the 

 minds of any one who acts in good faith. 

 Honey-dew tastes different, and the only 

 trouble comes if you sell honey-dew and 

 label it honey. You can sell all the 

 honey-dew you please and label it honey- 

 dew, or you can say, "Honey with a 

 small amount of honey-dew;" and if 

 you, as experts — ^bee-keepers, honey- 

 dealers, if yiau please — can not tell the 

 difference between honey-dew and 

 honey, if you d^ not distinguish any- 

 jn't you believe that 

 will. If you conscien- 

 honey and decide that 

 it is all right, your customers will be 

 pleased with it. You won't have any 

 trouble along that line. This law is 

 all right as it stands, for one who in- 

 advertently has a small amount of 

 honey-dew in his honey, but not so as 

 to be distinguished by the taste. I 

 take it that that is the point of the whole 

 matter. If it is so thin, if it is so dis- 

 agreeable, if it is so strange, that any 

 of us bee-keepers or honey-dealers can 

 distinguish it by the taste, you must not 

 sell it as honey. The labeling of this 

 honey-dew as honey is the danger- 

 point. If there is any question in your 

 mind you must put a label on it, "Honey 

 with Honey-Dew." It seems to me that 

 the pure food law has a whole lot of 

 effects. I am not so sure that it in- 

 creases the sale of honey. I don't know 

 but it increases skepticism. When you 

 call on wholesale grocers they say, "Is 

 that pure honey?" and even about comb 

 honey, "Your hon-ey is pure, is it?" If 

 you have honey-dew, I would advocate 

 labeling it honey-dew, or not selling 

 it. Sell it if you can, of course, but 

 don't label it as edible honey. 



Mr. Wheeler — I think this is a vital 

 point. I have something right in mind 

 that bears on that point very closely 

 too. There is a town near Chicago that 

 I watched closely this summer and the 



trees were just covered — once in June 

 and once in August — with this honey-, 

 dew. It was on the leaves of the 

 maples, and the bees worked on that, 

 morning, noon and night; all day they 

 stored that, and I know of a person 

 that is putting the honey up and selling 

 it. He is a hona-Me bee— keeper, and 

 undoubtedly he thinks that the honey is 

 clover honey. I will wager any amount 

 of money that that honey hasn't a parti- 

 cle of clover honey in it. I think those 

 bees gathered that honey entirely from 

 the leaves of the soft maple. I tasted 

 it and it is not bad honey at all. It is 

 dark. I was in a town this year where 

 there was no clover honey or anything 

 else except that secretion off the trees, 

 and this man put that up and put it on 

 the market. It makes a very passable 

 honey. It is not as light as some, has 

 a peculiar taste to me, because I have 

 tasted a good deal; but supposing that 

 honey is tested, I would wager that 97 

 percent of it would not pass the test. 

 What is the man going to do? He put it 

 up in good faith, put it on the market in 

 good faith. It suits his trade. He is 

 selling quite a lot. We bee-keepers 

 ought not to favor a law of that kind. 

 Supposing it is flavored a little with 

 basswood and so on. You can't tell. 

 People's tastes fool them. It seems to 

 me it is favoring something we ought 

 not to favor as a convention or as a 

 lot of bee-keepers. 



Dr. Miller — ^Just one point that Mr. 

 Wheeler raises: If we look at the law 

 of the State of Illinois, the honey defini- 

 tion is "material that the bees gather 

 from plants." That will cover honey- 

 dew. You will not get into any trouble 

 with the amount of honey-dew you get 

 in your honey, without specifying the 

 amount, and I do not, believe there is 

 much trouble about adulteration. I take 

 the ground Mrs. Glessner does. What 

 the bees do without any adulteration on 

 the part of man would not be called 

 adulteration. There, of course, might be 

 such a thing as their getting something 

 that is not fit. I have tasted here in 

 Chicago honey taken from the nectar 

 of plants that I considered much worse 

 than any honey-dew. I do not remem- 

 ber now what it was from, but it pro- 

 duced the effect on the mouth that eat- 

 ing Indian turnip does. The question 

 before us is whether this law is a 

 benefit to us or not. A fundamental 

 question upon which that rests is. Did 

 the putting on the market of all this 



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