ILLINOIS STATE BEE-KEEPERS' ASSOCIATION 



121 



^is. But he has done the best he could; 

 he has contributed his paper, and the 

 ■Secretary will read it. 



"MARKETING HONEY." 



By C. P. Dadant, Editor American 

 Bee Journal. 



The subject assigned to me for this 

 convention is one that has been so har- 

 ried over, and in which so little prog- 

 ress has been made that it seems diffi- 

 cult to bring up anything new. 



But the addresses written for bee- 

 keepers' conventions are especially in- 

 tended to open each subject, with the 

 purpose of bringing out objections, 

 suggestions and experiences. In this 

 way something new may be brought to 

 light and I sincerely hope those who 

 hear this may help towards the solu- 

 tion of what has become the greatest 

 problem for bee-keepers. 



Mr. F. C, Pellett, the Iowa State In- 

 spector, has recently brought to me 

 the suggestion that the neglect of 

 honey as an article of food is due to 

 the lack of official support to our in- 

 dustry. He says that honey is, to- 

 wards glucose and all corn syrups, in 

 the same relative position as butter is 

 placed towards margarine. But but- 

 ter is not neglected for margarine as 

 honey is neglected for glucose. In fact 

 no one, who can at all afford it, will eat 

 margarine in place of butter. Yet mar- 

 ' garine is so much like butter that de- 

 ception is very easily practiced. I my- 

 self remember eating breakfast, side 

 by side with a drummer in margarine, 

 at a small country hotel and hearing 

 my companion exclaim. "I thought 

 they could afford butter in country 

 towns!" He had recognized the taste 

 of his own product. But, even after I 

 was told of it, I could not distinguish it 

 from common butter. With honey, it 

 seems to me, the case is different. Any 

 one, after tasting corn syrup and 

 honey, ought to be able to recognize 

 the difference in sweetness, the form- 

 er containing less than 30 per cent of 

 saccharine matter, while the other has 

 about 80 per cent. As far as the con- 

 tents in sugar are concerned, the poor- 

 est honey is worth about three times 

 as much as corn syrup; and when we 

 think of the substances used to trans- 

 form starch into sugar, in manufactur- 

 ing commercial glucose, we certainly 

 should figure honey at four or five 

 times the value of corn syrup. 



But it is as Mr. Pellett says. There 



has been no active official support of 

 honey against glucose. In the butter 

 industry there is an army of officials 

 representing the diverse interests of 

 the dairymen, in the State Agricultural 

 Associations, in the colleges, even in 

 the state governments and the United 

 States Department of Agriculture. The 

 farming interests are carefully fos- 

 tered, but the bee-keepers have thus 

 far received scant recognition and their 

 fights have been left in their hands. 

 We all know how little efficiency there 

 has been as yet in our Associations, 

 whether State or National. 



Yet, I believe, every person who is 

 at all acquainted with the subject will 

 agree with me that the unhealthiness 

 of glucose, as compared to honey, is 

 greater .than that of margarine as com- 

 pared to butter. The fight, if it is made 

 for honey, ought to bring an easy vic- 

 tory. In this case what we need is to 

 have, in our colleges, on our Boards of 

 Agriculture, and in all official places 

 where the dairy interests are cared for, 

 men as active and efficient as those 

 who represent the farmers' main prod- 

 ucts. 



But is this all and will that be suffi- 

 cient to secure an increased recogni- 

 tion of honey on the consumer's table? 

 It certainly ought to help. 



A very good argument concerning 

 the food value of honey may be pro- 

 duced while the same argument does 

 not exist in comparing butter and mar- 

 garine. Those two substances have a 

 very similar food value. The food value 

 of honey has been sho'wn by an en- 

 tirely disinterested authority, W. B. 

 Barney, State Dairy Commissioner of 

 Iowa, and those of your members who 

 have read the American Bee Journal 

 for December have found out that, at 

 present prices, honey is one of the 

 cheapest articles of human food. 



However, with all these convincing 

 arguments, we will probably be still 

 confronted, for some years to come, 

 with the problem of creating an in- 

 creased demand for honey. We must 

 then consider the principal require- 

 ments. 



Marketing honey can properly be di- 

 vided under two separate heads, en- 

 tirely different. The first is packing 

 and preparing the product. The sec- 

 ond is seeking customers. 



Many bee-keepers who are unfit for 

 drumming their honey market, or at 

 least consider themselves unfit, are 



