American Cyclopædia and the American supplement to the Encyclopædia Britannica. In justice to the latter, however, it mnst be said that the British work, whose publishers repudiate the American supplement, contains nothing of this.
Here is what the American Cyclopædia says on the subject: "Glucose is very extensively fed to bees, which eat it with great avidity, and store it away unchanged as honey. It is also put up directly in trade as honey—with which bees have had nothing to do—being put by means of appropriate machinery into artificial combs made of paraffin" (page 834, vol. viii, edition of 1883).
The American supplement to the Encyclopædia Britannica has this information on the subject: "Honey is manufactured on the same plan, only here the bees are employed to assist in the fraud. They are furnished with a supply of starch-sugar, which they store in their combs, when these combs are also fraudulent, being made from paraffin and furnished to the bees, who fill them with glucose and cap them with genuine wax. It is difficult to see how the art of adulteration could be carried further" (page 41, vol. i, Hubbard Brothers, Philadelphia and New York, 1885).
Argument and refutation failing to kill the falsehood, the editor of Gleanings in Bee-Culture—a responsible man financially—offered a reward of one thousand dollars to any one (including Prof. Wiley) who would produce some of the so-called "manufactured" honey, or designate the place where it was made or could be found. This offer is still open and good. The writer of this article also offered through the press a reward of one hundred colonies of bees (equal to about one thousand dollars) to any one who would produce some of this "artificial honey." This offer also is still open and good. None, however, has ever been produced. No one has yet come forward to claim the cash or the bees.
Prof. Wiley had supplemented the assertion above quoted with the following additional information, probably to encourage the manufacturers: "This honey" (that is, the manufactured article) "for whiteness and beauty rivals the celebrated real white-clover honey of Vermont, but can be sold at an immense profit at one half the price." Now, had that business of honey manufacture been as practicable as profitable, the temptation to embark in it would have been almost too much for human nature to resist. But it seems nobody went in, while nearly everybody believed that other bodies were in.
However, Nature's dearth is likely to produce conviction where facts, arguments, and rewards failed to do so. The seasons of 1887 and 1888, especially the latter, were unpropitious for the "busy little bee," and yielded but little honey. The crop was a
