KKEomo troK PuoiftT. 828 



c&ws secrete milk from any acceptable food, is a complete 

 delusion. 



It is true that tlioy can make white comb from almost 

 every liquid sweet, because wax being a natural secretion 

 of the bee, can be made from all saccharine substances, as 

 fat can be put upon the ribs of an ox by any kind of nour- 

 ishing food. But the quality of the comb has nothing to 

 do with its contents; and the attempt to sell, as a prime 

 article, inferior sweets, stored in beautiful comb, would be 

 as truly a fraud as to offer for good money, coins which, 

 although pure on the outside, contain a baser metal within. 



Different kinds of honey or sugar-syrup fed to the bees 

 can be as readily distinguished, after they have sealed them 

 up, as before. 



The Golden Age of bee-keeping, in which bees are to 

 transmute inferior sweets into such balmy spoils as were 

 gathered on Hybla or Hymettus, is as far from prosaic 

 reality as the visions of the poet, who saw — 



"A golden hive, on a golden bank. 

 Where golden bees, by alchemical prank, 

 Gather gold instead of honey." 



Even if cheap sugar could be " made over " by the bees 

 so as to taste like honey, it would cost the producer, taking 

 into account the amount consumed (233) in elaborating 

 wax, almost if not quite, as much as the market price of 

 white clover honey; and, if he feeds his bees after the 

 natural supplies are over, they will suffer from filling up 

 their brood cells. 



617. The experienced Apiarist will fully appreciate the 

 necessitj- of preventing his bees getting a taste of forbidden 

 sweets, and the inexperienced, if incautious, will soon learn 

 a salutary lesson. Bees were intended to gather their 

 supplies from the nectaries of flowers, and, while following 

 their natural instincts, have little disposition to meddle 

 with property that does not belong to them ; but, if their 



