Similarly when honey is kept over a long period, every effort should be made to keep it in a cool and as dry a place as possible. Temperatures of 80 or 90 degrees or more over a long period will cause the honey to get darker, and as honey is hygroscopic (capable of absorbing moisture), a damp storage place may cause it to become thinner and to ferment. So honey may show tendencies to ferment either from having been harvested from the hive when yet too high in moisture content, or it may ferment if stored where the air is exceedingly moist. When a honey has once soured, it will be hard to return it to its original flavor, though prompt heating of a slightly soured honey may remove most of the difficulty. Hopelessly sour honey can be fed back to the bees after heating, or preferably made into vinegar.

As already explained, honey is usually sold either in comb honey sections, as wrapped cut comb honey, as chunk comb honey which is a mixture of both comb and extracted honey, or as extracted honey. The bulk of American honeys moves as liquid or extracted honey. Granulated honey should have more of a market than it has. Lately there has been developed a process by which the honey may be aided in its granulation by the addition of very fine grains of candied honey. This process called the Dyce process makes a very fine smooth granulated honey called creamed honey, which is reaching a popular demand.

Honey Uses

We think of honey usually as a table spread, to use on bread, or pancakes, or biscuits. This is possibly its chief use. Its use in cooking, however, is very considerable, both in pastries, in canning, in milk drinks, in sirups and desserts and as an adjunct to frostings and dressings. The American Honey Institute located at Madison, Wisconsin, has a number of booklets on honey and its use which are free for the asking.

Beeswax

Beeswax is the second most important product of the beehive. Produced by the honey bees themselves in the hive, it is extruded between the segments of the underside of the abdomen of the bee while she is gorged with honey. These small slabs of beeswax are formed either into comb for the bees' brood, their combs for surplus honey, or for sealing the combs when they have been filled with honey. The beekeeper obtains beeswax by melting up and pressing the wax from old discarded empty brood or super combs; or from cappings which have been removed from sealed combs of honey in extracted honey production.

Beeswax was one of the earliest of waxes, being used in the form of candles for lighting. This remains at least the second largest use of beeswax today. Several church faiths use beeswax to some extent. Earlier the Roman Catholic Church required that pure beeswax be used on the altar for the service of the Mass and the Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament. As the numbers in this faith grew, however, there was not enough beeswax to serve the purpose and the regulations were modified to require candles which were at least 51 per cent beeswax.

Probably the largest user of beeswax today is the cosmetic industry, since the emulsifying agent of nearly all of our modern cold creams is dainty, pure, white bleached beeswax, being used as well in ointments, lipsticks, pomades and rouges.

The beekeeper himself is the third largest user of beeswax in the form of comb foundation which he gives to his bees as the base for their combs. There are some 70 or more commercial uses of beeswax today. Some 200 million pounds of honey and four to six million pounds of beeswax are produced yearly in the United States.