336 THE BEE keeper's MANUAL. 



If a pound of West India honey costs about 6 cents,, and 

 the bees use, as they will, about one pound to make the 

 comb in which it is stored, it costs the producer at least 12 

 cents a pound, and if to this, he adds, say 5 cents more, for 

 extra time and labor in feeding, then his inferior honey costs 

 him at least as much a,s the market price of the very best 

 honey on the spot where it is produced ! If the bee-keeper 

 allows his bees to make what they will, from the blossoms, 

 and then begins to feed, after he has harvested the produce 

 from the natural supplies, the advance over the first cost 

 will hardly pay for the trouble, even if it were fair to palm 

 off such inferior honey as a first-rate article. If, however, 

 bees are fed on this food very largely in the latter part of 

 Summer, they will fill up their hive with it, before they 

 put it into the spare honey boxes, and the production of 

 brood will often be most seriously inlerferred with, at a 

 season of the year when it is important to have the hives 

 well stocked with bees, that they may winter to the best 

 advantfige. 



If Apiarians are anxious to have large quantities of choice 

 honey, let them manage their bees so as to have powerful 

 stocks in the early Spring, and they wil;l then be able to have 

 heavy purses and light consciences into the bargain.* I shall 

 now show how liquid honey, exceedrngly beautiful to the eye, 

 and tempting to the taste, may be made to great advantage. 



Dissolve two pounds of the purest white sugar, in as much.- 

 hot water as will be just necessary to reduce it to a syrup ; 

 take one pound of the nicest white clover honey, (any other 

 light colored honey of good flavor will answer,) and after 

 warming it, add it to the siigar syrup, and stir the contents. 

 When cool, this compound will be pronounced, even by the 

 best judges of honey, to be one of the most luscious arti- 

 cles which they ever tasted ; and will be, by almost every 



