278 THE BEE-KEEPER'S MANUAL. 
adhesion. In a few minutes it is sufficiently 
stiffened to allow of being cut, with a pair of 
scissors, into such conveniently-formed pieces as are 
best adapted for insertion into the hive at its 
mouth. To those who do not object to the trouble 
of preparing this kind of bee-food themselves, the 
cost may be estimated at that of the sugar, as there 
does not appear to arise any loss in weight. It will 
be seen that this preparation differs but little from 
the common confection familiarly known as barley- 
sugar. The bees, as lambent insects, have no 
difficulty, from the deliquescent properties of this 
concrete, in appropriating it speedily; and in the 
use of a large quantity there is a freedom from the 
usual degree of disturbance observable when syrup 
is administered. It may be given at any time of 
the day; and an impoverished family might fre- 
quently be saved by inserting a few sticks of 
barley-sugar within a hive, when any other mode of 
feeding was impracticable. In fact it would appear 
that no other artificial food is so acceptable to the 
bees; and much of it doubtless returns to the 
proprietor, intermixed with natural honey. By the 
process we have described, common sugar has now 
been converted into a substance much resembling in 
its properties the saccharine matter of certain 
fruits, as grapes, &c., known as uncrystallisable 
sugar; probably nearly identical with the honey 
collected by the bees from the nectaries of flowering 
plants. After exposure to the action of a moist at- 
mosphere, the concrete soon assumes a dissolved 
form; and thenceforth it so remains, as I have 
