FEEDING. 335 



SO, is a piece of as great stupidity as to pour a barrel of 

 water into the sugar pans, for every barrel of sap from the 

 maples, or juice from the canes ! If a strong colony is set 

 upon a platform scale, it will be found on a pleasant day, 

 during the height of the honey harvest, to gain a number of 

 pounds ; if examined again, early next morning, it will be 

 found to have lost considerably, during the night. This is 

 owing to the evaporation of the water from the freshly 

 gathered honey, and it may often be seen running down in 

 quite a stream from the bottom-board. 



Those who feed cheap honey to sell it in the market at a 

 high advance over its first cost, are either deceivers or de- 

 ceived ; if any of my readers have been deceived by the 

 plausible representations of ignorant or unprincipled men, 

 I trust they will be able from these remarks, to see exactly 

 how they have been deceived, and they will no longer per- 

 sist in an adulteration, the profits of which can never be great, 

 and the morality of which can never be defended. A man 

 who offers for sale, inferior honey, or sugar which he calls 

 honey, and which he is able to sell because it is stored in 

 white comb, to those who would never purchase it if they 

 knew what it was, or once had a taste of it, is not a whit 

 more honest, if he understands the nature of the article in 

 which he deals, than a person engaged in counterfeiting the 

 current coin of the realm : for poor honey in white comb, 

 ,is no less a fraud than eagles or dollars, golden to be sure, 

 on theiV honest exteriors, but containing a baser metal with- 

 in ! " The Golden Age" of bee-keeping, in which inferior 

 honey can be quickly transmuted into such balmy spoils as 

 are gathered by the bees of Hybla, has not yet dawned upon 

 us ; or at least only in the fairy visions of the poet who saw 



" A golden hive, on a Golden Bank, 

 Where golden bees, by alchemical prank, 

 Gathered Gold instead of Honey." 



