10 



U'HE BE}£-KEEPERS ' RE VlK ^ . 



enough now to keep the comb honey folks 

 busy experimenting on best methods for 

 one year at least. 

 St. Chables, 111. J an. 21, 1897. 



Notes From Foreign Bee Journals. 



F. L. THOMPSON. 



JTTlUSTRALIAN BEE BULLETIN.— "I 

 xl. find that I can sell much more honey in 

 my district by putting the extracted honey 

 in 2 lb. and 4 lb. tins. They should be put 

 up so as to weigh 4 lbs. gross weight ; they 

 may then be sold at a reasonable price, so 

 that working people can afford to buy them. 

 If they held four lbs. net they would be sold 

 as a 4 lb. tin, and at an advanced price 

 which would make the honey appear dear, 

 whereas the producer would not get any 

 more for his honey. The publie look at 

 the size of the tin. They don't stop to ask 

 if there are four pounds of honey or three 

 and a half ; they buy it as a four pound tin 

 and are satisfied. [Nevertheless, I would 

 prefer to state the truth on the label, as is 

 done on flour sacks.] I speak from experi- 

 ence as I have sold tons of honey put up in 

 just that way. I do not consider it practi- 

 cable to put our honey in glass, as we have 

 to pay such a high price for attractive jars 

 and tumblers, that it brings the price of a 

 pound of honey so high that working peo- 

 ple cannot afford to buy it for their children. 



If bee-keepers were to put their honey up 

 in 2 lb. and 41b. tins I am sure that there 

 would be tons more honey consumed in our 

 own towns, I could mention several stores 

 in my nearest town where they could not or 

 did not sell four sixty pound tins of honey 

 in twelve months, but after I had induced 

 them to try my honey put up in small tins 

 and neatly labeled, why, bless you, they sold 

 at the rate of about two dozen four-pouud 

 tins per week. At first they would order 

 two dozen at a time, but they soon increased 

 their orders to six, and then twelve dozen 

 at a time. My whole crop was sold out in a 

 short tinae. " — "Australian Yinkee. " 



" Icanuot agree that a queen will spread 

 foul brood, as I experimented over and over 

 again put ing a queen from an infected hive 

 into a heal hly I ive, and in not one case did 

 foul brood appear. If the queen spreads it 

 what is the good of the starvation cure'/" — 

 "Loyalstone. " 



Bienen-Vateb. — "Every bee-keeper should 

 also be a merchant" remarks Editor Weippl 

 with emphasis. " Whoever lives near cities 

 and summer resorts, and complains of not 

 being able to dispose cf his honey, hasn't 

 the stuff for a salesman. " [Which is true ; 

 but one would like to mildly inquire, why 

 should the leopard change his spots ? In 

 this connection, it seems strange that I have 

 never seen more than one reference to the 

 plan of selling honey in the city markets, 

 as other country producers do their products 

 —a plan which does not require some of 

 the rare and peculiar qualities of the peddler. 

 See Mr. M. H. Hunt's account, in the Amer- 

 ican Bee.Iournal. 1895, p. 85, of his success 

 in this kind of marketing. ] Herr Weippl 

 says further " It is not the thing for a bee- 

 keeper to do to support the public in its pre- 

 judices by unfavorable judgements of dark 

 honey, because he himself has light honey to 

 sell. He injures not only others, but also 

 himself, for the next year he may himself 

 harvest dark honey. " But in the next par- 

 agraph he ''supports a prejudice" by say- 

 ing" Never sell candied honey. " He lays 

 emphasis on clarifying by a gentle heat just 

 after extracting, saying the honey gains in 

 flavor [?1 and appearance by so doing. But 

 the small glasses should be filled when the 

 honey is cold, in order to include no air- 

 bubles. " Herr B. lived in a Moravian 

 villiage, where the sale of honey was scarce- 

 ly possible: the peasants were poor, and 

 strangers and summer guests did not look 

 up the barren region. But the place was 

 the breakfast and dinner station of a rail- 

 road. Herr B. made arrangements with 

 the restaurant-keeper to place his honey- 

 glasses on the counter for a small consider- 

 ation. For ten or twenty kaeuzers (SorlO 

 cents) the traveler received a little glass of 

 honey and a roll. The glass was wrapped 

 in paper containing brief information about 

 honey, with the address of the producer. 

 The business was a brilliant success, and he 

 no longer had to concern himself about 

 other places to sell his houey. Many of his 

 chance customers became lasting ones. " 

 "Advertisements in small provincial jour- 

 nals are very useful, as they generally con- 

 tain but few such, and are read from A to 

 Z." "If also now and then notices appear 

 about bee-culture, value of houey, or re- 

 ciepts for its use in the household, we thus 

 most effectually and yet gratuitously adver- 

 tise for ourselves and our bee-keeping col- 



