Page:Foods and their adulteration; origin, manufacture, and composition of food products; description of common adulterations, food standards, and national food laws and regulations (IA foodstheiradulte02wile).pdf/533

 the place of manufacture. The usual method of separation is by centrifugal force. The caps of the cells being removed, the boxes which contain them are placed in a centrifugal machine and the honey forced out by centrifugal action. The boxes are then returned to the hives where they are refilled by the bees. By this process extracted honey can be made in great quantities and for a much lower price than the same quantity of honey still held in the combs. The principal objection to extracted honey is due to the fact that it has been subjected to such extensive adulterations as will be mentioned further on. There can be no valid objection made to the character of extracted honey when it has been prepared under competent direction and with the skill and care which are required by the professional honey makers.

Strained Honey.—Strained honey is a variety of extracted honey which from the broken or fragmentary combs is allowed to flow by gravity or by gentle pressure. In such cases, naturally, the cell or honey comb is destroyed. The residual comb is sent to market as beeswax.

Properties of Honey.—Honey at ordinary temperature is a viscous liquid of a tint varying from almost colorless to almost black, according to the character of the flowers and the season in which it is gathered and the length of time of storage. It contains from 15 to 25 percent of water and usually has a small quantity of foreign substances, incident to its manufacture, such as particles of dust, pollen, fragments of bees, fragments of comb, etc. Honey, therefore, is a somewhat concentrated solution of sugars and these sugars are the natural products of the flowers of plants, modified to some extent, by passing through the organism of the bee. In passage through the bee the honey is impregnated with a small quantity of an acid, named from the ant, formic acid. It also suffers other changes which are very strongly marked in flavor and aroma but which cannot be very readily traced chemically.

Polarization.—Pure honey, that is, honey gathered solely from the saccharine exudations of flowers at the ordinary temperature of the laboratory, namely, from 65 to 85 degrees F., has the faculty of turning a plane of polarized light to the left, which is just the opposite of the optical properties of cane sugar. Whenever a honey shows a right-handed polarization it is a cause for suspicion respecting its purity. A honey of this kind has either been made by feeding the bees a sugar sirup or by the gathering, on the part of the bees, of the saccharine exudation, before alluded to, known as honey dew. It is perfectly true that bees may have gathered honey in exceptional cases, that is, the saccharine exudations of the plants in general, which will show a right-handed polarization, but this occurs so infrequently as to render it advisable to regard such a honey as abnormal in quality. The polariscope, therefore, becomes an almost indispensable implement in a study of the purity of honey.

Water.—As has already been stated, the usual content of water in honey