In purchasing bees in the spring, rap on the hives, and if you hear a long continued buzz, they are populous and healthy; but if the sound, as you rap, is short and light, the bees are weak, and not of much value. If the combs are black, it is an old stock, if light colored, young, and the most desirable. … Look out and don’t get cheated by men who sell rights to feed bees on a pretended discovered compound, said to be better than the honey from flowers. It is the greatest humbug of the age.

-- this is from The Northern Farmer, published in Utica NY. January 1852

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