FEKDING. 
275 
be wintered out of doors, they sliould have at least 
iwcnty-five pounds* of honey. 
All attempts to derive profit from selling cheap honey 
fed to bees, have invariably proved unsuccessful. The 
notion that they can change all sweets, however poor their 
quality, into good ho7iey,\ on the same principle that cows 
secrete milk from any acceptable food, is a complete 
delusion. 
It is true that they can make white comb from .almost 
cvei y liquid sweet, because wax being a natur.al 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 
Tiourishiug food. But the qu.ality of the comb has nothing 
to do with its contents; and the attempt to sell, as a prime 
article, inferior honey, stored in beautiful comb, is as truly 
a fraud as to offer for good money, coins which, although 
pure on the outside, contain a baser metal within. 
The quality of honey depends very little, if any, upon 
the secretions of the bees; and hence, apple-blossom, white 
clover, buckwheat, and most other varieties of honey, 
have each its peculiar fiavor.J 
* In movable-comb hives, tho amount of stores may bo easily ascertained by 
actual inspection. Tho weight of hives is not always a safe criterion, as old combs 
are heavier than now ones, besides being often over-stored (p. 82) with bee- 
bread. 
t When the bees are rapidly storing their combs, they disgorge the contents of their 
honey-sacs ns soon as they return from tho Dolds. That tho honey undergoes no 
change during the short time it remains in their sacs cannot positively bo affirmed, 
but that it can undergo only a very slight oh.ange is evident from the fact that the 
different kinds of honey or sugar-syrup fed to tho bees can be almost as readily dis¬ 
tinguished, after they have scaled them up, as before. 
Tho Golden Ago of bee-keeping, in which bees are to transmute inferior sweets 
into such balmy spoils as were gathered on Ilyblaor Ilymottus, is as far from prosslo 
realitv as tho visions of the poet, who saw— 
o A golden hive, on a golden bank. 
Where golden bees, by alchemical prank. 
Gather gidd instead of honoy.'* 
t “ That bees gather honoy, but do not secrete It, Is argued from the fact that 
bee-keepers And eell.s llliod with honey (in now swarms) on the first or second day.'' 
—Arwfofte. 
