The present may be called “trying times” to bee-keepers of
America. Poor honey seasons, hard winters, and the nefarious
warfare against the honey producers of this country in the
vile adulteration of honey, is indeed trying, discouraging
and diabolical. It appears, by the papers, that these glucose
scoundrels are not satisfied with adulterating extracted
honey, but according to this article that I clip from one of
our papers, _The Bushnell Record_, they are manufacturing
comb honey. It reads as follows:
Many singular discoveries have been made among manufacturers
by the census enumerators in the course of their
investigations. For instance, it has long been known that
dealers are in the habit of adulterating honey with glucose
on the plea of thus improving its keeping qualities. In
Boston, however, there is a firm doing a large business
in making honey entirely from glucose much in the same
way as manufacturers elsewhere make butter from suine and
oleo-margarine. The comb is molded out of paraffine in
excellent imitation of the work of bees; then the cells are
filled with clear glucose and sealed by passing a hot iron
over them, and the product is sent to Europe as our best
honey. The busiest Italian bees couldn't compete with this
firm in turning out honey, any more than could a Eurotas-like
Jersey breed compete in butter-making with our deft
manipulators of lard and tallow.
Now, brother bee-men, I believe the time has arrived when
this honey counterfeiting should be stopped; I therefore
suggest that the bee-men of this country come up in solid
phalanx “to the front,” and with Pres. N. P. Allen and the
bee-paper editors as leaders, let us agitate the question,
educate the people, stir up the press, wake up the country,
and vote or petition to Congress until we secure the passage
of a law by Congress against the adulteration of honey,
sugar, syrup, or food of any kind. Many of the leading
journals of our land are battling for the right in this
matter. The _Burlington_ (Iowa) _Hawkeye_ last week expressed
itself as follows:
It is time that stringent legislative enactments are passed,
making the adulteration of so many articles of food a
criminal offense, punishable by severe penalties. If these
things must be done to gratify the inordinate greed of some
men, let it be made obligatory on them that the packages
containing spurious products so proclaim them, under penalty
of confiscation when detected, and the fraud further
punishable by heavy penalty. No man has any right to sell a
compound of honey and glucose as pure honey, nor has he any
right, either moral or legal, to place a compound of butter
and lard, still further “doctored” with drugs, upon the
market as pure butter. If adulterations of food are allowed
to go on in this way, unrebuked, there is not an article of
food known that will not be counterfeited, and oftentimes
with substances very hurtful in character.
I am thankful so many are lending their aid and influence in
the cause of justice and humanity, but we want the united
efforts of honest bee-keepers, and consumers, and fair
dealers, to make a bold front against every adulterator, and
to expose him to the world. In this way I believe the problem
can be solved and the evil remedied.
Bushnell, Ill.
[So far as it refers to the adulteration of comb honey, it
is a false alarm; all bosh! We alluded to this subject more
at length on page 44 of the BEE JOURNAL for Feb. 9th. We
are glad, however, to see the interest being awakened on
the subject of food adulterations, and bee-keepers as well
as all other honest producers, cannot be too out-spoken in
denouncing it.—ED.]
For the American Bee Journal.
The In-and-In Breeding of Bees.