THE BEE-KEEPERS- REVIEW 



307 



intervals or on request. Keep an eye 

 out for shaky or dishonest firms. Fail- 

 ures occur in all lines of business; so, be 

 careful and don't get caught with goods 

 unpaid for. Make sales on a net cash 

 basis, or else figure two per cent, for 

 cash, and give 50 days. This each 

 salesman must decide for himself ac- 

 cording to his experience and locality. 



ONE POINT IN GETTING BIG ORDERS. 



Always ship bottled honey in original 

 packing cases with corrugated partitions; 

 as nothing disgusts a dealer more than 

 to receive a lot of broken and besmeared 

 glasses of honey. Have your cases made 

 in regular sizes of about four dozen each, 

 which will discourage the small, single 

 dozen order idea, and give you a better 

 and larger display, valuable in itself. 



Frequently I have made sales to 

 grocers through a friend in a distant city. 

 One sold several tons of honey each year 

 in bottles, tin pails, 60-pound cans, and 

 barrels, and at a nice profit to me. I 

 paid him 10 per cent, and found him 



worth it, as there were no losses nor 

 adjustments for me to worry about. 



Another time I secured, through a 

 friend, the name of a bank in a distant 

 state. 1 wrote the bank, and, by mention 

 of my friend, was favored with the 

 names of several grocers. These were 

 all written to, resulting in the sale of 

 nearly $100 worth of honey in tin pails 

 at S'j cents above market price, or a 

 net profit of S50 for doing the writing. 



Make your mailorder customers perma- 

 nent by writing them each year. It is a 

 fatal mistake to expect them to write to 

 you, for that it isn't the way it works 

 out; and customers expect a man who 

 has honey to dispose of to care enough 

 about selling it to write them first. 

 Remember that mail order customers 

 cost money, and are valuable assets to 

 the business. Keep a list showing the 

 amount of each sale; the kind of package, 

 and the price received, which will serve 

 as a valuable index in deciding what 

 kind of letter to write next year. 



Hebron, Ind., Dec. 21, 1909. 



More Profit in Retailing even a Small Crop 

 Than in Working Out. 



H. A. SMITH. 



CD 



Y experience during the past fall 

 has forcibly impressed upon me 

 the advantage of attending strict- 

 ly to my own business, and nothing else. 

 In other words, I have seen the disad- 

 vantage of allowing anything to side- 

 track me from the "main line"— bee keep- 

 ing. Up to the past fall I had always 

 thought it necessary to dispose of my 

 crop of honey as soon as possible, get 

 my bees packed for winter, and get to 

 work at something else, usually apple 

 packing, where I made $1.50 per day 

 for about 50 days. Last fall, however, 

 I did some thinking and figuring after my 

 crop was harvested. My bees did not 

 come through the previous winter in very 

 gOod shape on account of keeping sotne 



old "pet" queens, and, after doubling up, 

 I had only 33 colonies with which to 

 start the season of 1909. I attended to 

 them in every way possible, and secured 

 nearly 4,500 pounds of the best honey I 

 ever had, and increased to 46 colonies. 

 Now, the best wholesale price offered me 

 was 9 cents delivered at Toronto, which 

 meant less than 8 '2 cents, clear of cans, 

 etc. Perhaps at any other time I might 

 have accepted the offer, but last summer, 

 right in the middle of the busy season, I 

 had the audacity to get married, and so, 

 with some little added responsibility on 

 my shoulders, I concluded to devote the 

 autumn to stretching my crop of honey 

 out to as many dollars and cents as 

 possible. I did not fill my old position as 



