CHAPTER X.

HONEY AND ITS ADULTERATIO.VS.

DEFINITION OF ADULTERATION.

a

Added water and any foreign vegetable substance, including cane sugar and

glucose or any mineral substance. HONEY consists of the saccharine exudation from the nectaries of flowers collected by bees, and modified and elaborated by them in the crop or honey bag, which is an expansion of the oesophagus, and from which it is discharged on their return to the hive, and deposited in the various cells of the comb.

It consists of lævulose and dextrose, forming inverted sugar with an excess of dextrose, cane sugar, gum, extractive, a little war, some vegetable acid, and much pollen, together with certain odoriferous principles derived for the most part from the plants from which the honey is gathered.

The pollen in honey is essential to the nourishment of the bees themselves, since it is the only source of the nitrogen obtainable by them in the winter.

The following are the results of the analyses recently made by us of four samples of honey :

II.
III.

IV.
Water

19:56
16.88

13.63
Cane sugar

0.94
1.82

5.29 Glucoses

79.48
81.00

81.04
Insoluble matter

trace
trace

trace
Mineral matter

0.02
0.30

0.04

I. 17.48 none 82-50 trace 0.02

.

100.00 100.00 100.00

100.00 These honeys were not taken from the comb, and appear to represent only the liquid and uncrystallised portion.

Honey is usually divisible into two parts, one liquid and the other solid and crystalline, the latter consisting in part of cane sugar, and partly of granular masses formed of needlelike crystals of dextrose. The proportion of solid sugar is the greatest in old honey, but the quantity of cane sugar is largest in new honey, since it becomes gradually converted by keeping into inverted sugar. The honey furnished by a species of wasp, Polybia apicipennis, found in Central America, yields cane sugar in large crystals, according to Carsten ; but

а

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there is nothing singular in this fact, since that furnished by the honeybee very commonly contains, as represented by the author many years since, well-defined crystals having the form of cane sugar, and which are well shown in figures 69 and 70.

The fluid portion contains, besides lævulose, inverted sugar and some cane sugar, the colouring and the odoriferous substances of the ey. The honey which flows spontaneously out of the comb on the application of a gentle heat consists mostly of the fluid portion, and is called virgin honey, while ordinary honey is procured both by pressure and heat. The first honey collected by bees is also sometimes called virgin honey. This description of honey is considered the best, is of a pale colour, granular texture, and possesses a fragrant smell, while the common honey obtained from the older cells is darker coloured, thicker, and does not possess so agreeable a smell.

By pressure in a linen bag the fluid and liquid portions may be separated from each other, a clear syrupy substance passing through the linen, and the white solid sugar remaining behind.

To the various foreign substances contained in it, including especially pollen, the different colours, flavours, and odours possessed by the honey of different countries and districts are owing, and the possession of which, in some cases, causes it to be so highly prized. Hence the estimation in which the honey of Mount Ida, in Crete, has been always held. Hence also the perfume of Narbonne honey, of the honey of Chamouny, and of our own high moorland honey, when the heather is in the bloom. Sometimes these foreign substances possess narcotic or other dangerous qualities, as is the case with the Trebizond honey, which causes headache, vomiting, and even a kind of intoxication, in those who eat it. This quality is derived from the flowers of a species of rhododendron, Azalea pontica, from which the honey is partly extracted. It was probably this kind of honey which poisoned the soldiers of Xenophon, as described by him in the Retreat of the Ten Thousand.'- Johnston.

The following is Xenophon's description :— And there were there, in a village near Trebizond, a number of bee-hives, and as many of the soldiers as ate of the honey-comb became senseless, and were seized with vomiting and diarrhea, and not one of them could stand erect. Those who had swallowed but little looked very like drunk men, those who ate much were like mad men, and some lay as if they were dying. And thus they lay in such numbers as on a field of battle after a defeat. And the consternation was great. Yet no one was found to have died; all recovered their senses about the same hour on the following day. And on the third or fourth day thereafter, they rose up as if they had suffered from the drinking of poison.'

The solid part of honey, examined under the microscope, is seen to consist of myriads of regularly-formed crystals ; these crystals are for the most part exceedingly thin and transparent, very brittle, so that many of them are broken and imperfect; but when entire they consist of six-sided prisms, apparently identical in form with those of cane sugar. We see no other conclusions to come to however, but that they really represent the crystals of dextrose, seeing that they occur in

Fig. 69.

Crystals of HONEY, intermixed with the pollen granules of the flowers from

which the Honey was gathered. Magnified 225 diameters. honeys from which cane sugar is absent or nearly so. These crystals are, so far as our observations go, always present in honey, and they are usually the only kind met with.

Intermingled with the crystals may also be seen pollen granules of different forms, sizes, and structure, these are in such perfect condition, that in many cases they may be referred to the plants from which the honey has been procured. This is a very interesting and beautiful fact in relation to honey. The bees, in collecting the honey

from the flowers, carry away with them also some of the pollen of those flowers; now this pollen consists of complex utricles or cells, differing in size, shape, and organisation in different orders of plants,

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It has occurred to the author to make another highly interesting observation in connection with honey, showing in a very striking manner the amazing industry manifested by bees in the collection of honey. In examining the blossoms of our native heaths, now unfortunately many years since, and long before the first edition of • Adulterations Detected' was published, we were surprised to observe that there was scarcely one that had arrived at maturity that did not exhibit, usually on the upper surface of the corolla, one or more dark spots, occasioned by perforations. The conjecture at once occurred to us, that these perforations were made by the bees in their search for honey, and in order to facilitate its abstraction from the tubular-shaped flowers. It was not long before the correctness of this conjecture was ascertained. The bees, on alighting on the flowers, almost constantly inserted their probosces either through one of the apertures already made, or they pierced a fresh one. Now, of the countless myriads of blossoms in some miles of heath, there was scarcely one mature one observed by us which had not been perforated.

A very good way of obtaining the pollen of honey for microscopical

A examination is to dissolve a teaspoonful or so of the honey in cold water contained in a conical glass, and to examine a little of the sediment which subsides in the course of a few minutes, and which in some honeys is very considerable. The water causes the forms of the granules to change in some cases, and hence a better plan is to view the pollen as contained in the fluid part of the honey.

Some of the earlier numbers of the ‘Annals of Natural History' contain an article by the author, illustrated by a large number of figures, on the structure of the pollen granule; this will be found of some assistance to those who may desire to identify the pollen found in honey. Another useful plan of proceeding is to collect and examine the honey of the flowers from which the bees are supposed to have collected the honey, and then to search in this for the corresponding pollen granules.

THE ANALYSIS OF HONEY.

No reliable analyses of honey have yet been made, so far as we are aware, if we except the four samples the results of the examination of which have already been given.

The only determinations which are practically required are those of water, cane sugar, glucose, and insoluble matter, consisting chiefly of the pollen and the ash.

The methods to be pursued in the determination of the cane and other sugars have been fully described in the article on Sugar,'and need not here be repeated. There is, of course, no difficulty in estimating the matter insoluble in water and the ash. Since the composition of the glucoses is altered at a low temperature and they soon lose water, it is safest to estimate the amount of moisture present by difference.