Different Kinds of Sugar. 147 



nounced several specimens of what I feel sure were pure 

 honey, to be probably adulterated. 



While nearly or quite half of the nectar of flowers is 

 cane sugar, there is very little of such sugar in honey. 

 While from one to three per cent, is most common it not 

 infrequently runs to five or six per cent., and occasionally 

 to twelve or sixteen per cent. Quite likely in this last 

 case, imperfect digestion was the cause. The nectar was 

 not long enough in the stomach to be changed. Of course 

 twelve to fifteen per cent, of sucrose would almost surely 

 rotate the plane to the right. There is a very interesting 

 field for study here. What flowers yield nectar so rich in 

 cane sugar that even the honey is rich in the same element? 

 Honey often contains, we are told, as much as four per 

 cent, of dextrine. This of course tends to make it rotate 

 the ray to the right and farther complicates the matter. 

 Again it is easy to see that in case flowers secrete nectar in 

 large quantities the bees would load quickly, and so pro- 

 portionately less saliva would be mixed with it, and diges- 

 tion would be less thorough. 



We see now why drones and queens need salivary 

 glands to yield the ferment to digest honey. Often the 

 worker bees do not thoroughly digest it. 



Albuminoids — evidently from the pollen — vary from 

 five to seventy-five hundredths of one per cent. These 

 vary largely according to the flowers. It is quite likely 

 that in case of bloom like basswood where the honey 

 comes very rapidly — fifteen lbs. per day sometimes for 

 each colony — the stomach-mouth can not remove all the 

 pollen. Here is an opportunity for close observation. If 

 we know we have honey that was gathered very rapidly 

 we should have a test made for albuminous material to see 

 if its quantity increases with the rapidity with which the 

 honey is gathered. While there may be quite an amount 

 of this pollen in honey, usually there will be but little. 



Besides the above substances, there is a little mineral 

 matter, fifteen hundredths of one per cent., which I suppose 

 to be mainly malate of lime; a little of the essential oils 

 which possibly give the characteristic flavor of the differ- 

 ent kinds of honey, and more or less coloring matter, more 



