THE BEE-KEEPERS* REVIEW 



15S 



employed. The majority of bee keepers 

 are good producers. That end of the 

 business has been studied from every 

 possible point; but the selling-end has 

 been shamefully neglected. As already 

 remarked, not every producer can be- 

 come a successful retail salesman. A 

 man might possess the necessary, 

 personal requisites, but other circum- 

 stances might not favor the plan. A 

 Western bee keeper who produces comb 

 honey by the car load says that the most 

 profitable plan for him is to sell his honey 

 all in a lump, and then turn his un- 

 divided attention to the production of 

 another crop. This is undoubtedly true; 

 but I notice that he always gets the 

 highest, wholesale market price. He 

 investigates, studies the markets, crop 

 reports, etc., and no buyer gets his crop 

 for less than its value. Right in this line 

 it is safe to admit that men who are 

 now retailing their honey might find it 

 much more profitable to increase their 

 production until it reached the car load 

 stage, abandon the retail trade, and turn 

 their whole attention to production. In 

 short, selling should be only a part of a 

 plan that is the most perfect for some 

 particular man and his environments. 

 What 1 am pleading for is the proper 

 recognition of the importance of the sell- 

 ing-factor. Let each man most thor- 

 oughly study himself and his surroundings. 

 The wholesaler may find it to his ad- 

 vantage to develop a trade among re- 

 tailers, and the man who sells to retailers 

 may find it to his profit to retail his crop 

 to actual consumers. Of late, many 

 producers have developed a mail order 

 trade that is very profitable and satis- 

 factory. And so it goes. The great 

 difficulty is the heedless, thoughtless, 

 manner in which so many honey pro- 

 ducers keep on selling their honey, year 

 after year, in the same old way, with no 

 thought as to whether this plan is best 

 for them or not. Right here let me give 

 an illustration: Last winter I visited a 

 bee keeper who each year produces from 

 10.000 to 20,000 pounds of extracted 



honey. About half of his crop is white 

 honey, the other half is dark. There 

 was no difficulty in selling his white 

 honey at wholesale for a good price, 

 but it always hurt his feelings a little to 

 let the dark honey go at such low prices 

 as he was offered. Finally he tried 

 putting up some of the dark honey in 

 pails of such a size that he could sell 

 one for a dollar, and realize about eight 

 cents a pound for the honey. He loaded 

 up his cutter with these pails of honey 

 and started out among the farmers, 

 where a surprise awaited him. It 

 seemed as though those farmers were 

 just waiting for him to come along and 

 offer them the honey. Then he tried 

 going into a small village, where he 

 found he could sell the pails of honey 

 almost as fast as he could hand them 

 out. It was not unusual for him to sell 

 several dozens of pails in a day. The 

 honey was all gone before he scarcely 

 knew it. This may be an exceptional 

 case, but it shows what can be done. 

 The most important point, the beginning, 

 the foundation, of this profitable change 

 in marketing, was to think of it. That is 

 what I am writing this editorial for, to 

 set my readers to thinking upon this all- 

 important subject. 



Perhaps I ought not to criticize too 

 severely, as market conditions are vastly 

 superior to what they were years ago, 

 and are continually improving. I can 

 remember when about the only way to 

 sell honey was to consign it, and then 

 wait weeks, perhaps months, for it to be 

 sold. Extracted honey was practically a 

 drug in the market. Now, salable honey 

 can be sold for spot cash any day in the 

 year. Co-operation has helped wonder- 

 fully in a few localities by securing lower 

 freight rates and higher prices. Unity 

 of action in regard to prices in a certain 

 state or territory helps greatly in holding 

 up prices. White extracted honey may 

 be worth ten cents put up in 60-pound 

 cans, but, if a few bee keepers are offer- 

 ing it at eight cents, it is difficult to hold 

 the price up where it ought to be. The 



