h 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