FEEDING. 365 



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

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

 ceived ; and if any of my readers have been defrauded by the 

 plausible representations of ignorant or unprincipled men, l 

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

 they have been deluded, and that they will no longer persist 

 in an adulteration, the profits of which are small, and the 

 morality of which can never be defended. A man who 

 sells inferior honey, or sugar which he calls honey, to those- 

 who would never purchase if they once had a taste of it, is 

 not a whit more honest, if he understands the nature of the- 

 article, than a person who counterfeits 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 their honest ex- 

 terior, but containing a baser metal within ! " The Goldea 

 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, oti a Golden Bank, 

 Where golden bees, by alchemical ptant. 

 Gathered Gold instead of Honey." — Hooi. 



If a pound of West India honey costs about six 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 

 twelve cents a pound, and if to this, he adds enough to pay 

 him for extra time and labor in feeding, then his inferior 

 honey costs him almost as much as the market price of the 

 very best honey, on the spot where it is produced I If the 

 bee-keeper 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 honest to palm off 

 OS a first-rate article, such inferior honey ; but if fed verj' 

 31* 



