HONEY 
459 
idea of chemical composition. They may 
also be able to supply a good definition of 
a honey. But for the benefit of others, a 
brief statement covering this extensive field 
may not be out of place. 
As regards definition: 
According to the Century Dictionary, 
“Honey is a sweet viscid fluid collected 
from the nectaries of flowers and elabor¬ 
ated for food by several kinds of insects, 
especially by the honey bee (Apis melli- 
fica ).” An accepted German definition is, 
“Honey is the nectar obtained from flow¬ 
ers by worker bees, which, after modifica¬ 
tion in the honey-stomach of the latter, is 
stored in the cells of the comb for the nour¬ 
ishment of the young brood.” In this coun¬ 
try the food standards consider “honey as 
the nectar and saccharine exudations of 
plants.” This comes about in that many 
plants contain sugar in their saps, and, 
when an exudation of sap takes place, and 
the water in the sap is evaporated, a sac¬ 
charine residue remains, which is gathered 
by the bees. Also, many trees exude a 
sweet sap when stung by some insect, and 
this is also gathered by the bees. See 
Honeydew. 
Physically considered, honey may be a 
solid block resembling a pound cake of 
creamery butter or it may be semi-solid or 
decidedly liquid. The old idea that crystals 
of dextrose in a honey indicated beyond 
doubt that the product was badly adulter¬ 
ated with sugar should be and has been dis¬ 
pelled. 
In color, honey may be water-white, or 
it may grade thru the yellows to the brown 
into the seal brown and nearly to the black. 
It has been known to be decidedly red in 
color, and again at another time to have a 
greenish tinge—none of these indicating 
by any means the addition of artificial 
colors, but being due entirely to the source 
of the bees’ food. Honey may be as mild 
or as strong in flavor as one can imagine, 
and may possess all the fragrant aroma im¬ 
aginable, and again have a nauseous aroma. 
Yet in each, case it will be absolutely pure. 
The consuming public are very apt to 
jump at conclusions as to the purity of 
this product on account of these various 
flavors and aromas. A person used to clo¬ 
ver or alfalfa hone} 7 would immediately say 
buckwheat honey is not honey at all; 
and, vice versa, one used to buckwheat 
honey would say clover honey is nothing 
more than a mild-flavored sugar syrup. 
As regards composition: 
Honey belongs to the carbohydrate foods. 
It is practically a solution of the two su¬ 
gars, dextrose and levulose in water with 
sucrose in varying small quantities, nat¬ 
urally flavored and containing aromas im¬ 
parted to it by the flower and by the bee. 
Early analyses of honey were very incom¬ 
plete. Hassall in his “Food—Its Adulter¬ 
ations and the Methods for their Detec¬ 
tion,” published along in the sixties, re¬ 
ports moisture, cane sugar, glucose, insol¬ 
uble matter, and mineral matter in four 
samples. In his report he states, “With the 
exception of these, so far as we are aware, 
no reliable analyses have yet been made.” 
Wiley in Part 6, Bulletin 13, Division of 
Chemistry, published in 1892, gives a 
rather complete analysis of a number of 
American honeys. But by far the most 
complete and exhaustive study of Ameri¬ 
can honeys was made by Browne and pub¬ 
lished in 1908 as Bulletin 110, Bureau of 
Chemistry, United States Department of 
Agriculture. Following this, in 1912, Bryan 
published results of examinations of im¬ 
ported honeys from Cuba, Mexico, and 
Haiti as Bulletin 154 of the same bureau 
and department. Miss Alice R, Thompson 
in 1908 published results of the examina¬ 
tion of Hawaiian honeys as Bulletin No. 
17, Hawaiian Agricultural Experiment Sta¬ 
tion. 
Abstracting these, we obtain some inter¬ 
esting facts, and at the same time a fairly 
complete analysis of representative Ameri¬ 
can honeys, together with those likely to 
enter the American market. 
Browne made a classification of his sam¬ 
ples according to floral origin; that is, 
placing all those supposed to be obtained 
from clover together, etc., and then at¬ 
tempted drawing some conclusions as to 
physical and chemical constants of each 
variety. While the results do show some 
conformity to type, they are not as close 
as could be desired, for examination of the 
pollen found in the samples showed that 
the bees had gathered nectar from other 
flowers, altho the prevailing pollen was 
that of the species under which the analy¬ 
sis had been classified. 
