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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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