26o 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 



