260 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE 
ordinary sugar the use of more or less noxious 
chemicals seems to be indispensable. When a 
stock of bees must be artificially fed, and common 
grocers’ sugar is used for the purpose, the result 
is generally that half the stock is poisoned by the 
chemicals with which the sugar has been treated 
at the mill. And if this is its effect on bees, the 
inference must be that it cannot prove altogether 
wholesome for men. But its purity is not the 
chief reason why honey should be the universal 
sweet-food of the people. Honey is the ordinary 
sugar of nectar concentrated and converted into 
what is chemically known as grape-sugar ; and thus, 
in ripe honey, the first and most important part of 
digestion is already effected before it leaves the 
comb, This explains why so many delicate people, 
and particularly children, can assimilate food 
sweetened with honey, when they can take no 
other form of sweet. 
Doctors are continually finding some new virtue 
in honey. Its gently regulating action has been 
long known, and there is good authority for stating 
that there is not an organ in the human body which 
does not benefit from its habitual use. In all 
wasting diseases, and triumphantly in consump- 
tion, it will prevail as an up-builder when every- 
thing else fails. There is no doubt at all that cases 
of consumption have been entirely cured by a 
liberal diet of honey; and, notoriously, honey is 
the main ingredient in nearly all patent medicines 
