Dec. S, 1901. 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



773 



Huber Root — For the past two 

 months I have been seeinjf a preat 

 many people at the Pan-American Ex- 

 position, and I tind eight out of ten of 

 them imagine we mash the comb up 

 and squeeze the honey out through a 

 cheese-cloth ; they know absolutely 

 nothing about bees, or anything about 

 the way extracted honey is secured. 



Mr. Vinal — I think it is a good plan, 

 but we are not all able to hire so smart 

 a man as Mr. Coggshall is able to hire. 



Mr. Tyrrell— It is true that not all 

 of us are salesmen. The majority of 

 people who produce honey are not ca- 

 pable of selling that honey by a house- 

 to-house trade where we have to take 

 up the time to explain how the honey 

 is produced and why it is cheaper. 

 The plan that I used was to put up my 

 honey in suitable packages, then tak- 

 ing a circular which was just as brief 

 as possible, explaining how the honey 

 was produced — I would use say quart 

 fruit-jars — and leave this package and 

 circular, together with another small 

 circular telling the people why I left 

 it in this way. Ninety-nine out of 100 

 people, as soon as they ?tep to the door 

 and hear you have something to sell, 

 say "No." I leave the package of 

 honey and the circular, take the num- 

 ber of the house, tell them I will call 

 again on a certain day, and pass on. 

 Then I would go over the same terri- 

 tory a second time, and I found that if 

 I left it long enough — perhaps a week 

 — if they were honey users, they had 

 sampled the honey, found it was good, 

 and would pay for it. 



Mr. Longnecker- I would like to ask 

 if Mr. Tyrrell ever left a jar of honey 

 at a place, and when he came again in 

 a week and the honey hadn't been used 

 and they didn't want it. 



Mr. Tyrrell — I found there was only 

 one place where anything like that 

 ever occurred, and that was at the 

 house of a lady where the honey had 

 decreased perhaps an inch, and she 

 said it had run over the top 1 That is 

 the exception. 



Udo Toepperwein — Do you label all 

 your honey ? 



Mr. Tyrrell — Yes, sir. telling where 

 it is produced. 



Mr. Toepperwein— We label all our 

 first-class honey, and get the groceries 

 to sell it, and after the people get to 

 use it it will speak for itself. 



Mr. Vinal — I have had a little expe- 

 rience in selling comb honey, and my 

 plan has been to put the honey in show- 

 cases, properly labeled, and place it in 

 the stores on the commission plan, and 

 let them sell it at retail. I get 25 cents 

 for it retail, and 20 cents at the stores. 



SELLING HONEY THROUGH THE STORES. 



" Would you sell honey through the 

 stores ?" 



Dr. Mason —I think that has been 

 answered already. 



Mr. Toepperwein — If a person has 

 plenty of time, I think they would do 

 better to retail it. 



Mr. Fuller — I wouldn't take it to the 

 groceries, for this reason: I don't 

 want groceries enough to pay for what 

 honey I have. I would rather have 

 some money, and most of the grocery- 

 men in my section want me to take 

 trade. If I want any trade I have no 

 objection to selling them one or two 

 cases of honey, but where I want the 

 money, and don't want trade, then I 

 retail it and get the money for it. 



Mr. Niver— I would like to ask at 

 what price he sells to the grocer-vman. 



Mr. Fuller — The same price — 15 cents 

 a pound. 



Mr. Niver-And what do they sell it 

 for? 



Mr. Fuller- They make their profit 

 on the goods they give me. 



Mr. Niver- I have been a grocery- 

 man for many years and you couldn't 

 teach me that. 



Mr. Fuller — You talk about the price 

 of 15 cents being low; I can go to com- 

 mission houses today and buy No. 1 

 \vhite clover honey for 13 cents a pound. 



Mr. York — I think it makes a great 

 deal of difference where you are. I 

 would by all means work through the 

 groceries in large cities. Probably 

 you couldn't do that in small country 

 places, where there is only one or two 

 groceries — there you'd have to sell 

 from house to house. 



Mr. Vinal-Speaking about the price 

 of honey, I would like today to buy 500 

 lbs. of comb honey at 13 or 15 a cents a 

 lb. delivered at my place, for my trade 

 at the stores. I would pay 15 cents a 

 pound for 500 lbs. I can not get it in 

 Boston. 



Mr. Fuller — I would like to ask one 

 more question of these gentlemen who 

 retail their honej' in the cities, whether 

 they have any trouble with the author- 

 ities, whether they have to obtain a 

 license to do their work, or whether 

 they go on without being molested by 

 anybody. 



Mr. Ahlers — I am a bee-keeper, and 

 I have a right, at least in Wisconsin, 

 to sell my own produce. Now, I don't 

 know if I have a right to buy the honey 

 and sell it, but those questions are 

 never asked. I have sold it to several 

 policemen, who never asked me any 

 questions, and I think there will be no 

 trouble at all. 



E. Granger — I have noticed one diffi- 

 culty about retailing honey, and that 

 is, there are so many bee-keepers who 

 sell for the same price at retail as at 

 wholesale. In the district where I live 

 there are quite a few bee-keepers in a 

 small way, and they generally run out 

 of all the honey they have for sale, and 

 then try to bu3- at wholesale, and find 

 they cannot : it is all being sold at the 

 same price, 1 lb. or 100 lbs. When I 

 have sold out what little I have, and 

 want to get more at wholesale, I can- 

 not get it. 



Mr. Miller — With us we have to pro- 

 tect the groceries. If I sell honey at 

 10 cents retail I must cut to the grocery 

 trade, and I always protect them by 

 that means. I still sell at retail, as 

 much as possible, and at the present 

 time I am getting 11 cents for my ex- 

 tracted honey, including the tins. 



ARE QUEENS INJURED IN MAILING? 



" Does it injure queens to send them 

 by mail ?" 



Dr. Mason — Yes. 



Mr. Benton No. It does injure 

 them if they are improperly packed ; if 

 well packed it does not, I believe. 



Dr. Mason I would agree with him, 

 but I never saw one well packed yet. 



J. M. Rankin — I think the danger to 

 queens sent through the mail is about 

 as great as that of a person traveling 

 on a railroad, i)rovided the bees are 

 properly handled. 



Fred Schmidt — Do you think they 

 are properly handled today, the way 



they are thrown out and kicked around ? 

 I do not. 



Huber Root — I think the trouble is in 

 the confinement in passage through 

 the mail, and not particularly from the 

 rough handling. You take a queen 

 when she is laying well and shut her 

 up for several days, and keep her right 

 in the hive and she will not do so well 

 after it. 



W. W. Lathrop — Take queens and 

 cage them properly, pack them, keep 

 them a week, then liberate them and 

 see if you can not notice a difference. 

 I have tried quite a good many experi- 

 ments. I was led to it from buying 

 queens. My experience is that they 

 do not lay so regularly. The combs 

 will not fill so well. There are more 

 " skippers," and she will begin to fail 

 sooner. 



Mr. Benton--I receive a great many 

 queens from different countries, and 

 often as far as the Island of Cyprus, 

 and those queens were well packed. I 

 prepared the cages myself, sent them 

 there and gave careful instructions as 

 to how the bees should be put into 

 them, and in no instance have I been 

 able to perceive that those queens that 

 had been from 16.to 20 days in the mail 

 sack, and traveled 6,000 miles,had been 

 injured by that journey. 



Mr. Gemmill-Aside from the pack- 

 ing don't you think that the caging of 

 a queen a few days before she is ship- 

 ped has a g reat deal to do with the safe 

 delivery of the queen ? 



Mr. Benton — I don't practice that. 

 One point has been brought up. that of 

 throwing the mail-sacks from the train. 

 In cases where I knew it was to be 

 thrown from the train I enclosed the 

 cage in a cloth-lined envelope, which 

 would tend to protect the cage in case 

 of a shock. 



Mr. Fuller- What kind of a cage do 

 j'ou ship in ? 



Mr. Benton- It is a small, wooden 

 cage with three holes in it — a cage 

 which I invented some years ago. One 

 end has the food compartment: the 

 center compartment is a dark chamber 

 with only indirect ventilation ; at the 

 other end is the ventilating chamber. 



Mr. Fuller — How many bees do you 

 place in there as an accompaniment ? 



Mr. Benton — From 10 to 20, accord- 

 ing to the time of the journey. 



Dr. Mason — One of two things is 

 certain : The queens are injured in 

 the mail, or else the queen-breeders 

 send out poor queens. I have paid as 

 high as SW.OO for a queen and I would 

 not give eight cents for it finally. 

 Every last one of them — except one I 

 got last year — proved to be poor. 



Mr. Cook — There are hundreds of 

 testimonies that they are good and 

 they do produce good and prolific bees. 



Dr. Mason — Yes, sir, I can give you 

 one good one out of eight. 



Mrs. Acklin — We not only send out 

 queens through the mails, but we get 

 in queens, and it is very seldom that 

 we get one that is not all right. 



BEES MOVING EGGS. 



" Do bees move eggs from one cell 

 to another ?'' 



Mrs. Acklin I think they do. I 

 think they move an egg occasionally 

 from one hive to another. 



Mr. Geramill — I am quite satisfied 

 they move eggs from one cell to an- 

 other. 



