Aug. 3, 190S 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



539 



the bees until well ripened it is little better than sweetened 

 water and will never be good honey no matter how white 

 and fine it may look. This fad about looks does not deceive 

 them into buying short weights and an inferior quality. 



I always have been honest with my customers on all of 

 these points, and they know it. They can tell my honey any- 

 where they see it, as my name is on every section and once 

 I get a customer he gets for me his neighbor, and I sell most 

 of thv'ui one-half case or 12 pounds at a time. 



I also make light cases that- hold 13 sections, and de- 

 liver the honey in them. The customer leaves the lioney 

 in them until spring, or till the honey is used up. I have 

 a book -in which I keep the names of the customers where I 

 left the cases. I renuest them to save the cases for me, 

 and 1 go around in the spring and gather them up. 



Once you get a customer in this way, and deal honestly, 

 you will train others without any soliciting. This has been 

 my experience, and I cannot supply my present demands. 

 last season I made 12 pounds a wdiolesale rate, and less 15 

 cents a pound. 



To set a customer, and instead of losing him the next 

 season have him come and bring one or two more with 

 him, is the way to sell your honey in the home market. If 

 one is honest this will work nicely, but if you must use 

 separators in supers, you will have to order sections large 

 enough to hold 16 ounces to the pound, for the 14-ounce 

 pound is as dishonest as the grocer's 3-quart gallon of molas- 

 ses, or 12-ounce sugar done up in a nice, little, dainty pack- 

 age, as M. A. Gill says on page 213. 



The way to dispose of anything is to make it attractive, 

 but in doing so do not use deception assisted by dishonesty. 

 C ic can use care without dishonesty. One can put up a full 

 pound as tastily as he can a 12-ounce pound, or a full quart 

 can of honey as showy as one that is a little less. 



If any one will follow out what I have said, and does 

 not dispose of his honey in his home market it will be be- 

 cause he has a good deal more honey to sell than I do, or 

 has less customers to supply. But once you get the confi- 

 dence of the public for honest dealing, the rest is easy. Your 

 last sale is always good seed .sown. 



Yankton Co., S. Dak. 



Honey Education for the Public 



BY C. A. ST.^RK 



The widespread belief in the adulteration of comb honey 

 is, to my mind, the cause of the low price and small demand 

 for it. 



To illustrate : I live in a small village and have an 

 aoiary. There are two groceries here that handle section 

 honey bought from commission men in the city, yet in this 

 small place I have never been able to supply the demand for 

 mv honey at 5 cents per pound advance over prices at grocers. 

 Even tlic grocer pays me, when I let him have honey, my 

 regular retail price in order to be able to furnish pure bees' 

 honey to his best customers. 



Last fall one of these grocers sent to my house to know 

 if I had honey to sell. I sent word that I had sold all I 

 cared to sell, wanting what I had left for family use. He 

 sent back to say that his little son was sick, and wanted 

 honey. Couldn't I spare him a pound? Of course that ap- 

 peal could not be denied, so selecting a choice section of 

 honey I carried it down to the store myself. 



Almost the first thing that attracted my attention on 

 entering the store was a case of fine looking honey. I was 

 astonished; thought that perhaps there was some mistake. 

 But on accepting the honey he remarked that he was par- 

 ticular what liis children ate, and that the honey in the 

 case was from the city, and for all he knew was made there 

 in some factory ! Right there I did some missionary work 

 along the line of comb honey. 



I have had persons try to buy honey of me right in 

 those stores where nice section honey was on sale, and not 

 retting it of me they would walk out without buying, because 

 they doubted its being pure bees' honey. 



Another time, one grocer bought a small stock of ex- 

 tracted honey put up in quart Mason fruit-jars. After keep- 

 ing it until he was tired of looking at it he closed it out 

 at 20 cents per jar — good honey, too — while I was sellin:^ iny 

 exti acted at 30 cents per quart, the customer furnishing his 

 own jar. 



The remedy for this condition, I think, is in publicity. 

 Educate people to know pure honey by sight, in case of cnmb 



honey, and by taste in extracted. Carry samples. Show them 

 that no two sections are exactly alike, while they would be 

 exactly alike if made by machinery. 



In selling extracted, if possible secure a sample in the 

 original package, of the glucose mixture sold for honey. 

 Compare it with your own pure honey. Let customers sam- 

 ple it. You will not find it difficult to sell your honey, I 

 think. 



It has been my experience that the only thing necessary 

 to make sales is to convince your prospective customers that 

 you have pure honey of fine quality, and of course that is 

 ithe only kind you should ever attempt to sell for table use, 

 if you care to continue in the business. 



Putnam Co., 111. 



Keeping Comb Honey in Good Condition 



BY G. M. DOOLITTLE 



A subscriber to the American Bee Journal wishes me to 

 tell how to keep honey when off from the hive so it will 

 be as good when he gets ready to market it, as it was when 

 he took it frotu the hive. He says that his honey almost 

 alv/ays sweats and in some cases becomes nearly "sour be- 

 fore he is able to prepare it for shipping to market. This 

 being especially the case when the season happens to be 

 damp and rainy after he takes it off. 



It is barely possible that the correspondent removes his 

 honey from the hives before it is fully sealed. This should 

 never be done, unless it is at the close of the white honey 

 harvest, so that the dark honey shall not be mixed with the 

 white, or at the end of the season in the fall, when, of 

 course, we are compelled to take off all sections. 



Fully capped honey is not as likely to become watery 

 and sour as is that which is unsealed, and as unsealed honey 

 in any part of the section makes that section more or less 

 unsalable, it is always best, if possible, to leave all sections 

 on the hive until they are fully sealed. 



But I mistrust the trouble with the honey has been in 

 its being kept in a room not sufficiently warm, or lacking in 

 ventilation. Any room, or article in such room, will draw 

 or take on moisture rapidly if allowed to become much cooler 

 than the surrounding air at any time, and this room might 

 have been colder than the surrounding rooms, hence attracted 

 moisture to it. If the room had been well ventilated it would 

 have helped much ; and had it lieen thus, couoled with suitable 

 warmth, I cannot see what hindered the honey from evaporat- 

 ii." u.id keenino- all right. I have found that a high tempera- 

 ture in a room is of very little service if said room is so ti.ght 

 and close that no draft of air can carry off the moisture. 

 Consequently honey should not only be kept in a dry, warm 

 room, but there should lie enough ventilation in and about 

 the room to carry off all moisture which evaporates from the 

 honey : and the larger the pile of honey stored in any room 

 the greater should be the draft or ventilation. Where such 

 a room can be had, even honey that has begun to sweat can 

 be brought back to fairlv good honey again ; but honey that 

 has been kept in a poor room until it has begun to sour can 

 hardly be luade salable again ; for honey which has once 

 soured will never become fit to put on the market, and no 

 one who cares anything for his renutation or the good of the 

 market will ever do such a thing. 



The warm, dry, airy room will help much to thicken even 

 the worst sweating, souring lioney, but it will never bring 

 back its original flavor. I have even returned such honey to 

 the bees, and let them try their hand at making it market- 

 able again: and while they will dry and clean it up even if 

 they have to remove it from the cells and redeposit it again, 

 still it is an unpleasant job all the way around, and at best 

 the honey never looks as nice as when first removed from 

 the hive, and in taste it is very far from good honev from 

 the kind of flowers from which it was gathered. 



The best thing that can be done with any honey which 

 has soured is either to extract it and keep it for feeding 

 purposes, after scalding it, or cooking till sufficiently thick- 

 ened, allowin,'' the liees to clean out the combs ; or feed the 

 honey to strong colonies ri'.-'t from the combs, when in 

 either case the combs can In i>reserved for bait-sections the 

 next season after the bees h.i\e thoroughly cleaned them. 



Then it is not well to si' ire any comb honey directly on 

 the floor, for where so stor^ .1 the air cannot go under the 

 bottom of the pile, and tlin •ut^h lack of circulation of air 

 under the bottom, honey w;'I become watery in the most dry 

 and well-ventilated room at the bottom-back side of the pile. 



