CHAPTER Xlli 

 Southern Marketing Problems. 



THERE is probably no region of this country in which the 

 honey produced in any area is discriminated against 

 as much as the honey produced in the South, east of the 

 Mississippi River, when sold in northern markets. An obsolete 

 and unfair classification of all honey produced in this region as 

 "Southern" has been common. In this case the producer of 

 light colored honey does not fare as well as he should, when his 

 price for honey is compared with that of the producer of dark colored 

 honey, who may also sell on the northern market. The present 

 classification of honey based largely on color and not on food 

 value and "foreign" content, no matter where produced, is ob- 

 viously unfair, but it will take years of education to eliminate it. 

 However, it will not take years to eliminate unfair discrimination 

 against the fine honeys of the South. The best remedy is or- 

 ganization and honest grading. 



Most of the emergency funds of the Bee Culture Laboratory 

 during the war were spent in increasing honey production, some 

 of it in the South. This was right. Nearly half the bees of the 

 whole country are there and not much more honey than could 

 be consumed locally has ever been produced in hundreds of south- 

 ern localities, Texas excepted. Emergency funds could bring 

 great results there where producers are anxious to increase 

 their output and where their mental attitude was far more re- 

 ceptive to changes in their methods, than in much of the North 

 and East. One of the good features of the work there was or- 

 ganization. 



Southern Honeys. 



For the most part, the honey produced in the South is light 

 amber or amber in color. There are some regions where quite 



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