146 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



Feb. 25, 1904. 



cents. I bought ten 2>< ounce bottles, got labels, filled them 

 up and sold them for five cents apiece to anybody, more es- 

 pecially children, and from that form of an advertisement I 

 increased my sales in two days from $6 to $34.50. I had signs 

 painted and nailed upon a tree, and I had verv curious ques- 

 tions asked in regard to the honey produced, whether I got 

 it out of the trees, etc. ; but I took that as a form of advertise- 

 ment to introduce and sell honey, and found it very satis- 

 factory. 



KEEPING BEES ON A FLAT ROOF. 



"How many here have ever kept bees on a flat-roof 

 house?" 



Pres. York — Mr. Purple here in Chicago used to keep 

 about twenty-five colonies on the roof. 



Mr. Muth — No, there is no objection at all. We produce 

 just as much honey in the city as you do in the country. 



Mr. Horstmann — Do I understand Mr. Muth to say that 

 you can produce as much honey in the city as in the country? 

 I think if he was in the center of Chicago he would find he 

 was mistaken. 



Mr. Muth — In Cincinnati you can take a hop, skip and a 

 jump to go over the city, but that is much smaller, and we 

 have hill-tops where there ig lots of sweet clover. In early 

 spring it is yellow, and in a week or two or three it is all j 

 white as if a frost came; and we can produce as much honey, j 

 near those hills as you do out in the country. I believe one 

 man had there ^50 pounds of honey to the colony, right in 

 Cincinnati. Of course, here you would not get the same re- 

 sults. 



SELUNG HONEY BY THE POUND OR CASE. 



"Should honey in the comb be sold by the pound or by 

 the case?" 



Dr. Miller— Yes. 



A Member — Whichever way you can get the most. 



Mr. York — I prefer to buy it by the pound. 



Mr. Niver — I prefer to sell it by the piece. I think mer- 

 chants prefer that, and greatly prefer it. My trade was in 

 the anthracite region of Pennsylvania, and I worked it for 

 10 years there, and found that it was much handier that way, 

 and my customers got so they insisted on buying it that 

 way. There is no figuring for the merchant. He buys for 12 

 and sells for 15, and he knows just what his profit is. If 

 he buys by the pound it takes a good mathematician to tell — 

 he can't get it exact, and that is not pleasant for the mer- 

 chant. My idea entirely was to do the best thing for the 

 merchant — pack the honey for him so that he will have as lit- 

 tle trouble as possible, and we work for that idea steadily, 

 and that was one point I made : Pack in a case all exactly 

 alike; if it was No. i, put everything in there that was No. i : 

 No. 2 do the same, and charge in accordance with its quality. 

 If the merchant had a fancy trade he was willing to pay a 

 fancy price ; if he had a cheap trade he took the cheap 

 quality. 



A Member — If the merchant buys by the pound, can he 

 figure by the piece? 



Mr. Niver — One of the commission men told me he had 

 very great difficulty in selling very fine honey. It weighed 

 over a pound apiece, and the merchants did not want to sell 

 any such honey. They were obliged to sell by the piece, as 

 the competitor did who had lighter-weight honey. The finer 

 honey remained there, while the poorer honey went off rap- 

 idly. 



Mr. Kannenberg — I think Mr. Niver is in a different light 

 than I am. I would rather sell my honey by the pound, and 

 I know the merchants to whom I sell it would rather buy it 

 by the pound, because they sell it by the piece, and they do 

 not have to figure if the box weighs an ounce or a quarter of 

 an ounce less. They sell it by the section for so much, and 

 don't have to weigh it at all. 



Mr. Wilcox — I have had some experience. I wanted some 

 honey very badly this fall. A friend of mine 10 miles away 

 had some to sell. He was one of those men that was just as 

 positive as I was. He would sell by the piece and would not 

 weigh. I would buy by weight, and would not buy unless I 

 could see the pieces, and I could not buy it. They were 

 24-pound cases. We could agree on the price of the cases if 

 we could know how heavy they were. Could not do that. 

 Now these cases might have weighed 1.5 pounds, 24 sections. 

 They might have weighed 25 pounds ; they might have weighed 

 20 pounds. I know from years of experience that ordinarily 

 they weigh not less than 22 or more than 23, but some weigh 

 as low as 15 or 16, and some as hieh as 25, and I could not 

 afford to buy. I don't want to buy honey by the piece unless 



I can see the pieces. Now if you guarantee them to weigh 

 or to average any certain weight, it is equivalent to weighing 

 them. That is the very point — if you guarantee these cases to 

 go about 22 pounds, and they do not go over 18, it is no sale. 

 If they go 26 pounds you have given them honev for nothing. 



Mr. Niver — You have struck a point right there. I sold 

 by sample, and my sample was guaranteed to be the poorest 

 sample that could be picked out of any case that I sold. A 

 No. I would be guaranteed nothing poorer than that, and 

 that everything would be as good as that or better. I did it 

 that way. Why did the merchant prefer that? When you 

 sell by the pound the bee-keeper would put his fancy, his No. 

 I. No. 2, all in one case to make it average a certain amount; 

 but when the merchant tries to sell by the piece how is he 

 going to grade it? He cannot say, "Take your choice," 

 when one is worth double what another is; one weighs 10 

 ounces and another 16. You are obliged to grade correctly 

 when you sell by the piece, and you are obliged to pack 

 your honey so that there will be practically no choice — 

 the last section in the case you sell as quickly as the first ; 

 and that grading I advocated in New York City, and it went 

 into use so that it was quoted in the papers by the case in 

 New York a good many times. A good many dealers quoted 

 it by the case instead of by the pound, and I believe that that 

 suited the merchants much better, because if they had only 

 No. 2 honey they wanted to pay No. 2 prices, and if they 

 wanted fancy honey they paid for that. 



Dr. Miller — If he graded them all so that each case was 

 exactly alike, how many grades did that make? 



Mr. Niver — In our country it made nine. 



Dr. Miller — Did you ever grade any honey that way? 



Mr. Niver — Tons and tons of it. The way I came to do 

 that was that in our Association they gave me all the honey 

 to sell for a number of years. In our Countv Association 

 there were quite a large number who put all their honey in 

 my hands to sell, and I graded the whole of it. and we had 

 three colors for honey, and three grades. We had fancy. No. 

 I and No. 2; three colors, white, dark, and mixed, and the 

 mixed was sometimes three colors, and that made the nine 

 grades. i 



Mr. Clarke — It seems that the thought is to educate the 

 bee-keeper or the merchant to beat the public. I think if all 

 these endeavors were to be put to educating the public to call 

 for what rightfully belongs to them. 16 ounces in their boxes, 

 it would help the bee-keeper a good deal more. Most of you 

 want a light box. He gets paid by the pound. Some of them 

 want 12 or 13 or 14 — hardly ever 15 ounces. If the customer 

 comes in he thinks he is getting a pound. They charge 20 

 cents whether there is a pound of 16 ounces or not. 



Mr. Hammersmark — I think if everybody was perfectly 

 honest, we could sell by the piece as well as by the pound ; 

 but the trouble is everybody is not honest. 



Mr. Starkey — I believe we are all honest with ourselves; 

 that is, we claim for ourselves what is right. I noticed, a 

 short time ago. an enterprising groceryman in my town that 

 took a large quantity of honey, and he advertised it for sale 

 at 18 cents a package. But it happened that these packages, 

 he stated were full weight ; and I had noticed a great many 

 people there ; and he told me that he had a remarkable sale of 

 this honey, and it was good honey, but the fact that it \yas 

 full-weight honey had as much or more to do with his selling 

 it than any other thing. There is a great deal of honey that 

 is to be bought at the same price that is a little short, and 

 people are not so stupid as we are sometimes inclined to 

 think. There are certain places where people have never 

 made any inquiries, that have never heard that honey is ever 

 sold any way but by the section, and if they are wrong they 

 don't know it, and if they are satisfied with their price it is 

 all right; but I believe that if we will say, "I can sell you a 

 full-weight section," the bee-keeper's conscience will be 

 easier. 



SECOND DAY— Forenoon Session. 



Mr. York — We are fortunate enough to have with us this 

 morning Rev. McCain, who is in active service. He will 

 offer prayer. 



Mr. York — The first number on the program is an ad- 

 dress by W. Z. Hutchinson, President of the National Bee- 

 Keepers' Association, entitled, 



EXPERIENCES OF A FOUL BROOD INSPECTOR. 



■ Mr. McEvoy, Ontario's most efficient Inspector of 

 Apiaries, says it is easier to manage the bees than it is their 

 owners, and I certainly agree with him. It is all right for an 

 inspector to understand foul brood, to be able to recognize it, 



