If Apiarians are anxious to have large quantities of choice honey, let them manage their bees so as to have powerful stocks in the early Spring, and they will then be able to have heavy purses and light consciences into the bargain. I shall now show how liquid honey, exceedingly beautiful to the eye, and tempting to the taste, may be made to great advantage.
Dissolve two pounds of the purest white sugar, in as much hot water as will be just necessary to reduce it to a syrup; take one pound of the nicest white clover honey, (any other light colored honey of good flavor will answer,) and after warming it, add it to the sugar syrup, and stir the contents. When cool, this compound will be pronounced, even by the best judges of honey, to be one of the most luscious articles which they ever tasted; and will be, by almost every one, preferred to the unmixed honey. Refined loaf sugar is a perfectly pure and inodorous sweet, and one pound of honey will communicate the honey flavor, in high perfection, to twice that quantity of sugar: while the new article will be destitute of that smarting taste which honey alone, so often has, and will be often found to agree perfectly with those who cannot eat the clear honey with impunity. If those engaged in the artificial manufacture of honey, never brought any thing worse than this, to the market, the purchasers would have no reason to complain. As however, the compound can be furnished much cheaper than the pure honey, many may prefer to purchase the materials, and mix them themselves. If desired, any kind of flavor may be given to the manufactured article; thus it may be made to resemble in fragrance, the classic honey of Mount Hymettus, by adding to it the fine aroma of the lemon balm, or wild thyme; or it may have the flavor of the orange groves, or the delicate fragrance of beds of roses washed with dew.
I have recently ascertained that if two pounds of the best refined sugar be added to one of common maple sugar, the compound will be a light colored article, retaining perfectly the maple taste, and yet far superior to the common maple sugar. After making this discovery, I learned that a large part of the very nicest maple sugar is made in this way!
Attempts have been made to feed to bees, to be stored in the honey boxes, a mixture of the whitest honey and loaf sugar; but the result shows a loss rather than a gain. The mixture, before it is fed, will cost about 10 cents per pound. At the very furthest, not more than one half of what is fed, can be secured in the comb, for it requires about one pound of honey, to manufacture comb enough to hold a pound of honey. The actual cost of the honey in the comb, will therefore be, at least 20 cents per pound; and the pure white clover honey can be bought for less than that. Those who desire to have something exceedingly beautiful to the eye, and delicate to the taste, at a season when the bees are not storing up honey from the blossoms, and in situations where the natural supply is of an inferior quality, if they do not regard expense, can place upon their tables, something which will be pronounced by the best judges, a little superior to any thing they ever tasted before.
I have repeatedly spoken of the great care which is necessary to prevent bees from getting a taste of forbidden sweets, so as to be tempted to engage in dishonest courses. The experienced Apiarian will fully appreciate the necessity of these cautions, and the inexperienced, if they neglect them, will be taught a lesson that they will not soon forget. Let it be remembered that the bee was intended to gather its sweets from the nectaries of flowers: to use the exquisitely beautiful language of him whose wonderful writings supply us on almost every subject, with the richest thoughts and happiest illustrations, they were created to
"Make boot upon the Summer's velvet buds,
Which pillage they with merry march bring home
To the tent royal of their emperor:
Who, busied in his majesty, surveys
The singing masons, building roofs of gold."—Shakspeare.
When thus engaged, the bees work in perfect accordance with their natural instincts, and seem to have little or no disposition to meddle with property that does not belong to them. If however, their incautious owner tempts them with liquid food, especially at times when they can obtain nothing from the blossoms, they seem to be so infatuated with such easy gatherings, as to lose all discretion, and they will perish by thousands, if the vessels which contain the food are not furnished with floats, on which they can stand and help themselves in safety.
The fly was intended to feed, not upon the blossoms, but upon food in which, without care, it could easily be drowned; and hence it alights most cautiously, on the edge of any vessel containing liquid food, and warily helps itself: while the poor bee, without any caution, plunges right in and speedily perishes. The sad fate of their unfortunate companions, does not in the least, deter others who approach the tempting lure: but they madly alight on the bodies of the dying and the dead, to share the same miserable end! No one can understand the full extent of their infatuation, until after seeing a confectioner's shop, assailed by thousands and tens of thousands of hungry bees. I have seen thousands strained out from the syrups in which they had perished; thousands more alighting even upon the boiling sweets; the floors covered, and windows darkened with bees, some crawling, others flying, and others still, so completely daubed as to be able neither to crawl nor fly; not one bee in ten able to carry home its ill-gotten spoils, and yet the air filled with new hosts of thoughtless comers.
It will be for the interest of all engaged in the manufacture of candy and syrups, to fit gauze wire windows and doors to their premises, and thus save themselves from constant loss and annoyance: for if only one bee in a hundred escapes with his load, the confectioner will be subjected in the course of the season to serious loss. I once furnished such an establishment, after the bees had commenced their depredations, with such protection; and when they found themselves excluded, they lit on the wire by thousands, and fairly squealed with vexation and disappointment, as they tried to force a passage through the meshes. At last as they were daring enough to descend the chimney, reeking with sweet odors, even although the most who attempted it, fell with scorched wings into the fire, it became necessary to put wire gauze over the top of the chimney also!
How often, as I have seen thousands of bees, in such places destroyed, and thousands more deprived of all ability to fly, and hopelessly struggling in the deluding sweets, and yet thousands more blindly hovering over them, all unmindful of their danger, and apparently eager to share the same destruction, how often has the spectacle of their infatuation seemed to me, to be an exact picture of the woful delusion of those who surrender themselves to the fatal influences of the intoxicating cup. Even although they see the miserable victims of this degrading vice, falling all around them, into premature and dishonored graves, they still press on, madly trampling as it were, over their dead and dying bodies, that they too may sink into the same abyss of agonies, and that their sun may also go down in darkness and hopeless gloom. Even although they know that the next cup may send them, with all their sins upon their heads, to the dread tribunal of their God, that cup of bitter sorrows and untold degradation, they will drain even to its most loathsome dregs.