ILLINOIS STATE BEE-KEEPERS' ASSOCIATION 



113 



needed some explanation, and I there- 

 fore have written a paper on the 

 production and care of extracted honey 

 which aims to fbring these points out. 

 The first part of the paper, in order to 

 make the paper general, included 

 some of the ordinary directions for 

 this work which it would be entirely 

 superfluous for me to read at this time. 

 I shall first discuss the ripening of 

 honey. 



THE CARE OF EXTRACTED HONEY. 



By Dr. E. F. Phillips, 



In Charge of Apiculture, Bureau of 

 Entomology. 



I was recently asked by the officers 

 of the National Association to prepare 

 a paper for this meeting. iHowever, 

 owing to the shortness of the time 

 after the request came, I was unable 

 to prepare a new paper, but I agreed 

 to read a part of a paper which I had 

 prepared ifor publication on the pro- 

 duction and care of extracted honey. 

 I shall omit the first part of this pa- 

 per which deals with the production, 

 and shall read only the portion per- 

 taining to the care of the honey after 

 extraction. The entire paper will be 

 published soon as a part of one of the 

 bulletins of the Bureau of Entomol- 

 ogy. 



The Ripening of Honey. 



When nectar is gathered from flowers 

 by the worker-bees, the amount of 

 water contained in it is very high. It 

 is generally supposed that, by the time 

 bees reach the hive to deposit the nec- 

 tar in the cells, part of this water has 

 been removed; at any rate, during the 

 process of ripening, the amount of 

 water is very much reduced, until, in 

 thoroughly ripened honey, it will not 

 exceed 25 per cent and is generally 

 not more than 20 per cent. Some very 

 ripe honeys will have as little as 12 

 per cent oif water in them. If more 

 than 25 per cent of water remains in 

 the honey at the time of extraction, it 

 will probably ferment. 



The ripening of honey consists not 

 only of the evaporation of the surplus 

 water of the nectar, tout especially of 

 the transformation of the sugars of 

 the nectar into the levulose and dex- 

 trose of honey. Unripe honeys contain 

 a larger proportion of sucrose or cane 

 sugar, and it ,is probable that the 

 longer the honey remains in the hive 

 the less of sucrose will be found in 



it. While honeys vary all the way 

 from zero to 8 or 10 per cent in their 

 sucrose content, the poorest honeys are 

 those which contain the least. The 

 official honey standard of the Associa- 

 tion of Official Agricultural Chemists 

 allows 8 per cent of sucrose in honey. 



It is the policy of most bee-keepers 

 to allow this ripening to take place 

 in the hive by waiting until the honey 

 is almost all or entirely capped, and 

 this is undoubtedly the preferable 

 method. It is a matter of common 

 observation that ihoney which re- 

 mains in tihe hive for a long time 

 has a better "body" and has more of 

 the characteristic honey aroma. By 

 ripening in .the hive, honey gets its 

 characteristic flavor to a greater ex- 

 tent than is possible in evaporation 

 outside the hive. 



There have been several machines 

 devised for the artificial ripening of 

 honey wihich has 'been extracted 

 "green," this is with too great a wa- 

 ter content. The principle on which 

 all of these are constructed is the 

 application of heat, not to exceed 160 

 degrees F,, for a sufficient time to re- 

 duce the amount of water present to 

 about 20 per cent. Either sun heat or 

 artificial heat may ibe used. In the 

 western part of the United States honey 

 may be, and usually is, extracted before 

 it is all capped, because it is the gen- 

 eral practice of bee-keepers to run the 

 honey directly from the extractor to 

 large tanks sometimes holding sev- 

 eral tons, out in the open, covered 

 with porous cloth tightly tied down 

 to exclude bees. Many of these tanks 

 are contracted at the top, leaving 

 only a comparatively small opening. 

 On account of the extreme dryness of 

 the atmosphere and total lack of rain 

 during the dry season, this partial 

 evaporation outside of the hive takes 

 place very rapidly. 



The advocates of ripening outside 

 of the hive argue that, if honey is 

 extracted before all the water is re- 

 moved from it, the bees have less to 

 do inside of the hive and can devote 

 almost all of their time to gathering 

 nectar in the field. This obviously 

 would result in an increased amount 

 of nectar, and, consequently, provided 

 the forage will produce it, in an in- 

 creased amount of honey. They ar- 

 gue that it is impossible to detect any 

 difference between honey ripened in- 

 side of the hive and that ripened out- 

 side, as far as fiavor is concerned, but 



