Gleanings in Bee Culture 



®(D[]DW(B[P©gl1ia(D[JD^ MDGDd [D]®®DdG{iD 



At Borodino, New York 



ADVERTISING AS PRODUCERS. 

 I have been reading the Rural New - Yorker for the 

 past year, and T notice that many of the producers 

 of apples, potatoes, beans, etc.. put inside the pack- 

 ages a slip of paper, or something of the kind, tell- 

 ing what they received as producers, and request- 

 ing the consumer to let them know what he paid 

 for the same. From data received in this way the 

 liural figures that the producer gets only about 35 

 cents of the consumer's dollar. This seems quite 

 unfair to the producer, and gives a clue to the rea- 

 son why we bee-keepers receive so small a price for 

 our honey when compared with most of the things 

 we have to buy. Now, while I would not advocate 

 the same plan. I have been wondering why it 

 would not be a good plan to put our names, as pro- 

 ducers, on every crate of comb honey we send out, 

 if not on every section, using a pretty stamp there- 

 for. Then by sending out only a gilt-edged article 

 the consumer would soon know of whom he could 

 buy the best honey, and in this way the progress- 

 ive bee-keeper might build vip a most profitable 

 trade, while those who work only in a slipshod way 

 could be shut out from hurting us by selling their 

 product for less than good honey is worth, as is so 

 often done by the careless and indifferent. 



This question carries me back more than 

 a quarter of a century, when I was produc- 

 ing much more comb honey than our home 

 market woukl consume, which obliged me 

 to send quite a share of my crop abroad. I 

 sent some to different counties in this State, 

 and in States adjoining, and reasoned that 

 no buyer should object to the producer's 

 name and address on the packages of honey 

 which he produced, and even went so far as 

 to procure a rubber stamp, and put my name 

 on every section. This was very little trou- 

 ble if done just before the cover to the crate 

 was nailed on, as the sections were all in 

 rows, so the stamp could be pressed on each 

 almost as soon as it takes to tell it. As I 

 "wielded '" this stamp I said to myself, '" If 

 the producer or mai^ufacturer of an article 

 has not the right to have his name on it, I 

 don't know who has. How is a honey-pro- 

 ducer going to advertise his business and 

 work up a trade for his product unless he 

 places his name on every section of honey 

 he considers as A No. 1? It has taken me 

 over fifteen years to learn how to produce a 

 real fancy article of comb honev, and I 

 should be foolish to give this away to some 

 one who happened to buy my honey expect- 

 ing to sell it again. Those ptirchasing to 

 sell again have a right to place their name 

 on the package as the seller of it, but in no 

 way should they be allowed to mark it or 

 the sections so as to advertise themselves as 

 the producer." 



About this time I took a sample of my 

 section honey to a buyer in Syracuse, N. 

 Y., taking a section from each of the differ- 

 ent grades which was produced that season, 

 exi)ecting to put my stamp on only that 

 which I considered a" fancy article, as I did 

 not consider it good policv to stamp the in- 

 ferior grades. The buyer looked the samples 

 over, got my prices for each grade, then 

 about the quantitv I had, made a few fig- 

 ures, and offered me about $25.00 more than 

 I expected to get for the whole crop. Of 

 course I sold it to him. I then asked him 



how he wanted it put up. He said, "Put as 

 near as you can the proper proportion of all 

 grades in each crate." I objected, and then 

 told him how I had been in the habit of 

 putting my stamp on each section of fancy 

 and Xo. 1 honey, putting that in crates by 

 itself, while the ofT grades went without the 

 stamp. He said that he had bought the 

 honey, paid me a good figure for it, and it 

 should be his right to dispose of it as he saw 

 fit, to which I had to agree or be guilty of 

 not living up to my part of the contract. 

 We then talked the matter over, and he 

 agreed that, where I did my own selling to 

 the consumer, I was right in wishing my 

 name on every package, as that would hold 

 me and the consumers together. But with 

 him as a buyer the case was different. He 

 was building up a trade there in Syracuse 

 and in other cities, reaching out into other 

 States, therefore he wished to have his name 

 on every package, and not that of the pro- 

 ducer. He then went on and told how he 

 was spending time and money and energy 

 and thought in building up a market for 

 honey in all these cities, and considered 

 that it was only reasonable that he shotxld 

 reap a reward for so doing. He did not ad- 

 vertise that he was the producer of the hon- 

 ey he sold, but tried to impress upon his 

 customers the idea that he was an expert 

 judge of honey, and took great pains to se- 

 cure that which was of excellent quality. 

 He took great pains to live up to his profes- 

 sions, and always furnished an excellent ar- 

 ticle, and thus led his customers to believe 

 that, when they bought one, live, ten, or 

 twenty-five crates of honey of him, they 

 could rest assured that it had his guarantee 

 that it was all right. He said that, if he 

 should send out honey having upon the sec- 

 tions the names of the different producers 

 of whom he purchased, he would never suc- 

 ceed in building up a demand for the honey 

 he bought, for one day he might be selling 

 honey stamped Doolittle, and the next day 

 that stamped .Jones, and so on to the end of 

 the list of producers from whom he bought. 

 When we were through with this talk I saw 

 that there were two sides to this as well as 

 to many other questions, and that, if I pro- 

 duced more honey than I could sell at re- 

 tail, or direct to the consumer, the buyer of 

 this overplus was entitled to pay for the 

 time he s^ient in getting it from the produc- 

 er to the consumer. 



He instructed me to put this honey up in 

 crates holding from 100 to 112 pounds, ac- 

 cording as the sections were completed by 

 the bees. When delivering the second load, 

 a day or two after the first delivery, I found 

 him sorting the honey I first brought, and 

 putting the different grades into different- 

 sized crates or cases, and sending each to 

 his different customers in the different cities, 

 in accordance with what any particular 

 market called for. 



