March, 3918 GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



HONEY MARKETS 



133 



There is so little honey left in either the 

 hands of the producers or of the jobbers, 

 that quotations are practically little more 

 than estimates of what honey would bring 

 if it were on the market in appreciable 

 amounts. We have received from several 

 large wholesale firms * ' what quotations 

 would be if there were any honey on the 

 market. " 



The middle of February, we knew of one 

 carload of extracted honey in five-gallon 

 cans, held by a producer in the Middle West, 

 who was holding for 20 cents, f. o. b. his 

 railroad station. At the same time, one car- 

 load of Western honey was offered to New 

 York at I8I/2 cents, f. 0. b. shipping point. 

 Still another car was just recently sold by 

 one of the oldest and largest shippers in the 

 West at 16%c. So it is fair to infer that the 

 price of white extracted honey is practically 

 18-19 cents. 



The price of fancy or No. 1 comb honey 

 is as high as the man who holds it can get — 

 but there is very little held anywhere. One 

 big dealer in the East, when asked (since 

 Feb. 1) what price should be quoted on comb 

 honey said: "I don't know, but the price 

 is blamed high." He also said he would 

 not know where to go to find a thousand 

 pounds of it in the hands of producers. 



The prospect of early California honey 

 coming onto the market soon to relieve the 

 shortage is very dubious. Northern Cali- 

 fornia has this season had very little rain 

 and Southern California almost none. Bee- 

 keepers there despair of a sage honey crop, 

 and because of drouth the honey conditions 

 of California are the worst at this writing 

 (Feb. 20) in many years. 



About Feb. 1 there was for 10 days a de- 

 cided slackening in demand for honey in the 

 Eastern markets. What was the cause of 

 this? There are some shrewd friends of 

 honey who say the price has been ballooned 

 too high for the future good of the market. 

 Their point is that present unprecedentedly 

 high retail prices of honey will serve to 

 place it on the luxury list in the public mind 

 and it will remain there when normal sugar 

 prices have returned. These friends of hon- 

 ey urge that this was the time when honey 

 dealers, big and little, should not have join- 

 ed in a wild scramble to ' ' get rich quick, ' ' 

 especially those large dealers who bought at 

 wholesale prices that would have warranted 

 a lower retail price to the consumer than has 

 prevailed during the last winter. It is main- 

 tained, with very considerable reason, that 

 the last six months was the time to demon- 

 strate honey as a staple food and not to ad- 

 vertise it as a luxury. 



A word about how Gleanings quotes the 

 honey markets may just here be pardoned 

 the Editor. 



The honey market, during the past season, 

 has been not only higher but more exception- 

 al and more affected by divers factors 

 than ever before within our experience. It 



may be the same sort of market again the 

 coming season — especially if the world-wide 

 war continues into another fall and winter. 

 We do not know but that the price of honey 

 may reach a higher level in 1918 than in 

 1917. It is quite jtossible. We are not cer- 

 tain, too, that the price of honey may not 

 go down in 1918 — for two reasons mainly: a 

 possible ending of the war, and an increased 

 supply of sweets. We don 't know — and we 

 don 't pretend to know, and we say so frank- 

 ly in our honey market reports. In discuss- 

 ing the honey market from month to month, 

 we are careful not to advise the honey-pro- 

 ducer either to let go of his crop or to hold 

 onto it. We try to tell him the exact market 

 situation, as best we can get it, but we leave 

 him to decide for himself when to sell and at 

 what price. We will not take that heavy re- 

 sponsibility altho we maybe criticised for not 

 doing so. Why we refuse to advise when to 

 sell and when to hold honey is illustrated ex- 

 actly by what has happened to the potato 

 market during the last several months. 

 Farmers in our part of the country, who 

 could have got $1.60 and $1.75 per bushel for 

 their potato crop last fall right from the 

 field, were given a great deal of wise advice 

 to hold their crop — a good deal of it printed 

 advice. These potatoes today are worth only 

 about $1.00, and going lower. We don't 

 need to point the moral, except to say that 

 if we could foretell honey prices and other 

 prices with super-human certainty, we would 

 tell Gleanings readers in advance about hon- 

 ey prices and advise them what to do — we 

 would also go on the Chicago Board of Trade 

 and get rich. 



Below we quote the wholesale price (the 

 price to the retailer — not the price paid by 

 the wholesaler to the producer) as sent us 

 by various large city dealers; also the latest 

 quotation received by us from the U. S. 

 Government Bureau of Market honey prices: 



General Quotations of Wholesalers. 



[These firms are asked to quote the wholesale 

 prices they make to retailers. Accordingly, their 

 prices must be figured at least one profit higher than 

 the price paid the producer. The large dealers do 

 not quote prices in print that they will pay futurely 

 to producers.] 



KANSAS CITY. — There is very little comb honey 

 coming in, but what we are getting is selling at 

 $5.00 per case of 24 sections. The receipts of ex- 

 tracted honey are very light, selling from leVgc to 

 18c a pound, according to quality and color. Bees- 

 wax is selling at 39c a pound. 



C. C. demons Produce Co. 



Kansas City, Mo., Feb. 15. 



ST. LOUIS. — Our market is practically bare of 

 comb honey and very little extracted honey now in 

 the jobbers' hands. Demand would be good for 

 fancy or ordinary comb honey, if stocks were avail- 

 able. Extracted honey, light amber, in cans, 17- 

 18c; amber, 15-17c. Clean, average yellow beeswax, 

 per lb., 38l/,c. R. Hartman Produce Co. 



St. Louis, Mo., Feb. 15. 



CHICAGO. — Receipts continue to be light, prob- 

 ably owing to the severe cold weather of the past 

 month which has practically prohibited shipments of 

 comb honev. The best grades of white comb con- 

 tinue to bi'-in;? 25c per lb., with off grades selling 

 at 20c per lb. and above. E.xtracted, white grades, 

 17c to 18c per lb., according to kind and quality. 



