For many years, Apiarians have attempted to make the feeding of bees on a large scale, profitable to their owners. All such attempts however, must, from the very nature of the case, meet with very limited success. If large quantities of cheap West India honey are fed to the bees in the Fall, they are induced to fill their hives to such an extent, that in the Spring, the queen does not find the necessary accommodations for breeding. If they are largely fed in the Spring, the case is still worse; (See p. [320].) It must therefore be obvious that the feeding of cheap honey can only be made profitable where it serves as a substitute for an equal quantity of choice honey taken from the bees. In the latter part of Summer, the Apiarian may take away from the main hive, some of the combs which contain the best honey, and replace them with combs into which he has poured the cheaper article; or if he has no spare combs on hand, he may slice off the covers of the cells, drain out the honey, fill the empty combs with West India honey, and return them to the bees: giving them at the same time, the additional food which they need to elaborate wax to seal them over. If he attempts to take away their full combs, and gives them honey in order to enable them, first to replace their combs, and then to fill them, the operation, (see p. [326],) will result in a loss, instead of a gain.
I am aware that for a number of years, persons have attempted to derive a profit from supplying the markets of some of our large cities, with an article professing to be the best of honey, but which has been nothing more than the cheap West India honey fed to the bees, and stored up by them in new comb. In the City of Philadelphia, large quantities of such honey have been sold at the highest prices, and perhaps at some profit to the persons who have fed it to their bees. Within the last two years, however, the article has become so well known that it can hardly be sold at any price; as those who purchase honey, instead of paying 25 cents per pound for West India honey in the comb, much prefer to buy it, (if they want it at all,) for 6 or 7 cents, in a liquid state! It must be perfectly obvious that to sell a cheap and ill-flavored article at a high price, under the pretence that it is a superior article, is nothing less than downright cheating.
I am perfectly well aware that many persons imagine that if any thing sweet is fed to bees, they will quickly transmute it into the purest nectar. There is, however, no more truth in such a conceit, than there would be in that of a man who supposed that he had found the veritable philosopher's stone; and that he was able to change all our copper and silver coins into the purest gold! Bees to be sure, can make white and beautiful comb, from almost any kind of sweet; and why? because wax is a natural secretion of the bee, (see p. [76],) and can be made from any sweet; just as fat can be put upon the ribs of an ox, by any kind of nourishing food.
"But," some of my readers may ask, "do you mean to assert that bees do not secrete honey out of the raw material which they gather, or which is furnished to them, just as cows secrete milk from grass and hay?" I certainly do mean to assert that they can do nothing of the kind, and no intelligent man who has carefully studied their habits, will for a moment, venture to affirm that they can, unless for the sake of "filthy lucre," he is attempting to deceive an unwary community. What bee-keeper does not know, or rather ought not to know that the quality of honey depends entirely upon the sources from whence it is gathered; and that the different kinds of honey can easily be distinguished by any one who is a judge of the article.
Apple-blossom honey, white clover honey, buckwheat honey, and all the different kinds of honey, each has its own peculiar flavor, and it is utterly amazing how any sensible man, acquainted with bees, can be so deluded as to imagine any thing to the contrary. But as this is a matter of great practical importance, let us examine it more closely.
When bees are engaged in rapidly storing up honey in their combs, they may be seen, as soon as they return from the fields, or from the feeding boxes, putting their heads at once into the cells, and disgorging the contents of their "honey-bags." Now that the contents of their sacs undergo no change at all, during the short time that they remain in them, I will not absolutely affirm, because I have endeavored, through this whole treatise, never to assert positively when I had not positive evidence for so doing: but that they can undergo but a very slight change, must be evident from the fact that when thus stored up, the different kinds of honey or sugar can be almost if not quite as readily distinguished as before they were fed to the bees. The only perceptible change which they appear to undergo in the cells, is to have the large quantity of water evaporated from them, which is added from thoughtlessness, or from the vain expectation that it will be just so much water sold for honey, to the defrauded purchaser! This evaporation of the water from the honey by the heat of the hive, is about the only marked change that it appears to undergo, from its natural state in the nectaries of the blossoms; and it is exceedingly interesting to see how unwilling bees are to seal up honey, until it is reduced to such a consistency that there is no danger of its souring in the cells. They are as careful as to the quality of their nectar, as the good lady of the house is, to have the syrup of her preserves boiled down to a suitable thickness to keep them sweet.
Let all who for any purpose whatever, feed bees, keep this fact in mind, and never add to the food which they give them, more water than is absolutely necessary. To do so, is a piece of as great stupidity as to pour a barrel of water into the sugar pans, for every barrel of sap from the maples, or juice from the canes! If a strong colony is set upon a platform scale, it will be found on a pleasant day, during the height of the honey harvest, to gain a number of pounds; if examined again, early next morning, it will be found to have lost considerably, during the night. This is owing to the evaporation of the water from the freshly gathered honey, and it may often be seen running down in quite a stream from the bottom-board.
Those who feed cheap honey to sell it in the market at a high advance over its first cost, are either deceivers or deceived; if any of my readers have been deceived by the plausible representations of ignorant or unprincipled men, I trust they will be able from these remarks, to see exactly how they have been deceived, and they will no longer persist in an adulteration, the profits of which can never be great, and the morality of which can never be defended. A man who offers for sale, inferior honey, or sugar which he calls honey, and which he is able to sell because it is stored in white comb, to those who would never purchase it if they knew what it was, or once had a taste of it, is not a whit more honest, if he understands the nature of the article in which he deals, than a person engaged in counterfeiting 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 exteriors, but containing a baser metal within! "The Golden 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, on a Golden Bank,
Where golden bees, by alchemical prank,
Gathered Gold instead of Honey."
If a pound of West India honey costs about 6 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 12 cents a pound, and if to this, he adds, say 5 cents more, for extra time and labor in feeding, then his inferior honey costs him at least as much as the market price of the very best honey on the spot where it is produced! If the bee-keeper allows his bees to make what they will, from the blossoms, and then 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 fair to palm off such inferior honey as a first-rate article. If, however, bees are fed on this food very largely in the latter part of Summer, they will fill up their hive with it, before they put it into the spare honey boxes, and the production of brood will often be most seriously interfered with, at a season of the year when it is important to have the hives well stocked with bees, that they may winter to the best advantage.