516 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



July 



they are confusing to those who are not up in bee 

 culture any better than myself. All light honey is 

 known as clover honey, and all dark or mixed hon- 

 ey as buckwheat honey, and that is enough, com- 

 mercially. If honey goes on the market as clover, 

 buckwheat, basswood, goldenrod, etc., and on that 

 line finally the name of every weed and flower that 

 a bee gets any honey from, it will cause a useless 

 confusion in trade, and interfere with a free con- 

 sumption; for when one wants to buy honey, if he 

 can't tlnd some certain flower, honey that some en- 

 thusiast c wise beekeeper has told him his last 

 light honey was made from, he won't buy. 



Concerning extracted honey, ] think the dark 

 honey has the advantage, for it has no season, but 

 sells the year through for about the same price; 

 while to get the price thai light extracted honey 

 commands, it has to be sold early before cold 

 weather, hence its selling season is much shorter; 

 and if kept over that season it depreciates in price 

 more than the dark extracted honey. I have no in- 

 ventions in the honey line. I am writing this only 

 for the good of the honey trade, if there is any 

 good in it. If a uniform style of package could be 

 adopted, so that the much-despised middleman could 

 depend upon receiving it so he could duplicate his 

 orders at all times with the same style of package, 

 the consumption of honey would increase many 

 fold. H. R. Wright. 



Albany, N. Y., June 25. 



Friend W., I know you have for years 

 been remarkably successful in disposing of 

 dark comb honey ; but I did not know before 

 that you had succeeded in finding a market 

 for dark liquid honey. We are very glad in- 

 deed to know it ; and it illustrates once 

 more the fact that people buy and use many 

 things when they once get into a notion of 

 doing so. In our vicinity they have got in- 

 to a notion that honey must be white, and 

 therefore they will not even taste of any 

 thing else— at least a great majority of them. 



SHIPPIMG AND SELLING HONEY ON 

 COMMISSION. 



SUGGESTIONS FROM A COMMISSION MAN. 



Mr. Boot: — I was induced to go into the receiving 

 of comb honey for this market last August, by a 

 man of wide experience in that line. Of course, he 

 was allowed to write and solicit consignments, and 

 all he did say on paper I do not know, as 1 kept no 

 copy then of the letters as I do now. Well, on came 

 the honey from ditferent sources. It was very 

 gratifying to know that the man was well known 

 among bee-keepers, having been in business quite a 

 while before. Just about the time the honey came 

 in and should have been sold and put upon the 

 market, he got into some difficulty that detained 

 him from active work for me or us, and then the 

 whole thing of making a new trade and a new mar- 

 ket fell to my lot; and although not successful as 

 to obtaining the prices the shipper wanted, owing 

 to the bad season for honey, we managed to dis- 

 pose of about 30,000 lbs. of comb honey and 60,000 

 of extracted honey, at prices, for comb honey, 9 to 

 12 cts., for dark and buckwheat; 13 to 13 for num- 

 ber 2 clover and basswood, and 14 to 16 for fancy 

 No. 1 clover; paper boxes, 1 cent more, and the ex- 

 tracted 5Vi to 7 for buckwheat, fall flower, and 



dark; and 6X to 7 for mixed and for basswoud; and 

 No. 1 white, 7 to 7'2 and sometimes 8 cents. Of 

 course, we charged 5 per cent commission on ex- 

 tracted and 10 per cent on comb honey; charge no 

 interest, insui-ance, or storage, but merely take off 

 the freight and cartage or expressage; and with all 

 that we have men ship us who are not batisfled, and 

 make all sorts of threats of what they will do about 

 publishing us before the convention held by bee- 

 keepers, etc., so that I will not get (they say) any 

 one to ship to me. Now, I do want to ask you if the 

 few men who have written me thus are a fair type 

 of bee-men or honey-shippers. If so, I hope they 

 will be judicious enough not to place themselves in 

 a position to be answerable to the law for defam- 

 ing the name or the man's business. 



I will now give you some points in my experience 

 that have a tendency to ruin a market on comb 

 honey, so that it is impossible to get fair prices for 

 it; for instance: Last fall, nearly every commis- 

 sion house that handles produce or vegetables had 

 several small consignments of honey, and they sold 

 it at what they could get for it, and especially if 

 some of it came in a leaky condition; instead of flx- 

 ingit up aal gst'.in? at the a3tail lojtaad sellin? 

 the rest at a price to sustain the market, they let 

 it go at any thing to get rid of the " sticky stuff," 

 and the sharper whD bought it does what the re- 

 ceiver should do, and he who sells it to the consum- 

 er at so low a price that the honest handler says, 

 "lean not get honey to sell at that, hence I am 

 off." Now, as a remedy, every shipper of honey 

 should write to any large city and find out whether 

 there was or is a honey-house there, or a man who 

 makes a specialty of handling honey in all shapes, 

 and correspond with him about their productions, 

 and in that way his honey goes to one party, and 

 the wholesale trade know where headquarters for 

 it is, or should be, and there they go to get it, good, 

 bad, or indifferent, and prices for all kinds and 

 styles, and much better prices could be obtained 

 and much more satisfactory all around. 



I should like to speak about a few things in re- 

 gard to honey being broken in the case. We can 

 not recover from the railroad company every time, 

 as the companies receive it only at owner's risk of 

 breakage; and if it comes in a leaky condition they 

 say they are not responsible for it, unless it should 

 be smashed in tranfit by a wreck, or packages bro- 

 ken to pieces in transit. E. J. Walker. 



Philadelphia, Pa., March 14. 



Be not weary in well doing, friend W. 

 You know the rest of the text. Do your 

 duty well and faithfully before the great 

 Father above, and you will surely find your 

 reward. Faithful, honest, conscientious com- 

 mission men are always in big demand. 

 In regard to shipping at the owner's risk, 

 I think if 1 were shipping honey I should 

 prefer a higher rate, and have it go at the 

 railroad company's risk. 



SPACING BROOD-COMBS. 



IS IT 1%, 1/e, OR IVi? 



After reading Gleanings, pp. 490—2, where the 

 points are so ably brought out on both sides, I 

 would not even need to make a comment were it 

 not that the subject is one of more than ordinary 

 importance. I wish I could feel that I fully deserve 



