488 



June 6. 1907 



American ^ee Journal 



Mr. Moore — Wholesale or retail? 

 Mr. Baldridge — Retail. I never had 

 but one price in my existence, and I 

 do not see the necessity of having more 

 than one price. 



Mr. Arnd — In selling honey, I think, 

 in order to protect the people that re- 

 sell it — to the private trade you ought 

 to charge more than you do to a man 

 who expects to sell it again. I charge 

 two prices for honey, and I charge three 

 jjrices for honey — to the man that buys 

 in large quantities by the ton; to the 

 man that buys a few cans at a time, 

 to the man that buys it to eat on his 

 ■own table. To the man that buys it 

 for his own table I sell at such a price 

 that another man could buy honey of 

 ine and sell it to that same man at the 

 same price I sell, and yet make money. 



Mr. Wilcox — My trade is a wholesale 

 trade. We sell none to families nor to 

 jobbers to sell again to groceries, of any 

 consequence. I have one price for ev- 

 erybody, and if the prices change I 

 charge each man the same thing ; even 

 though they may have agreed upon a 

 higher price, I give them the same price 

 that I charge others; and I know from 

 several years' experience that it will be 

 best in the long run to do so. They 

 will sooner or later discover it, if you 

 are charging them more than you are 

 charging others, and it will surely in- 

 jure you in the end. It is not fair, it 

 is not honest, it is not good policy — 

 and that is the question — to have dif- 

 ferent prices for customers of the same 

 class, for the same class and kind of 

 honey. 



Mr. Moore — That is the point. 

 Mr. Wilcox — But, of course, there is 

 ■one trifling exception. If you have a 

 ■customer that you are a little in doubt 

 about, whether he will ever pay or not, 

 you can charge him a little more, and 

 perhaps he will go somewhere else. 



Mr. Arnd — That remark of IMr. Wil- 

 cox's is, I think, well put. He says 

 "the class." Now the man who buys 

 a gallon of honey to eat on his own 

 table ought to pay more than Mr. Wil- 

 co.x or any other bee-keeper that wants 

 several cases; and in order to protect 

 the man who buys the honey and sells 

 it again, we have to charge the retail 

 man more. 



Mr. Wilcox — The difference is, you 

 class the customer and I class the honey. 

 I spoke of the same class of honey. 



Pres. York — While we are on that 

 question, here is one that touches it a 

 little bit: "Should not the bee-keeper 

 be compelled to guarantee to the broker 

 or buyer that his honey will stand the 

 pure food law test?" How many think 

 he ought to be compelled to guarantee 

 it raise your hands. None. All who 

 think the producer ought to be com- 

 pelled to guarantee. About 15. It 

 looks as if we all did, who care to 

 vote. 



Mr. Taylor — The question in my mind 

 is. What good would it do if they guar- 

 anteed it? 



Mr. Wilcox — In Minnesota they are 

 forbidden to sell it without it is marked 

 as the producer's honey, and that is a 

 guarantee without anything more on it. 

 Mr. Thompson — This question I be- 

 lieve was d'scussed here once before, as 



to what constituted honey that would 

 stand the pure-food law test. That is 

 the question I had in mind — how the 

 producer is going to be able to guaran- 

 tee his honey other than that it is 

 gathered from natural sources. U 

 honey-dew brings it into the class where 

 it could not be guaranteed, how is he at 

 all times going to be able to guarantee 

 his honey? 



Mr. Taylor — He guarantees it and 

 runs the risk. 



Mr. Meredith — I would like to have 

 Mr. France give us some suggestion in 

 regard to how to tell honey when it is 

 pure, or any other information on that 

 subject that he can give. 



Mr. France — That is part of the con- 

 stitution of the National Association ; 

 one of the planks in the platform is to 

 prosecute adulterators of honey. I be- 

 gan investigating that side of our plat- 

 form, and I found that honey varies 

 greatly in different localities; it varied 

 greatly in the same locality, according 

 to the conditions in which it was gath- 

 ered. Then I began to try chemistry 

 to know where to get a basis to work on. 

 I am sorry we have not yet attained sat- 

 isfaction in that line. I went down to 

 the Eastern States to see the chemists at 

 the time of the United States Chemist 

 Bureau meeting, as to the definition of 

 honey. They were going to throw oui 

 entirely all forms ut honey-dew, and 

 it was on my pleading that that part was 

 put therein. I can imagine a bee-keep- 

 er might be honest in the belief that he 

 was selling a good grade of^ clover 

 honey, and it would not all of it stand 

 up to the test, the way they were giving 

 it. So the definition has been modified. 

 The only thing I know that we can do 

 at the present time under the new food 

 law, which will go into effect January 

 1st, is to keep our bees as near as we 

 can where they will store the sweet that 

 they get from the field; and if we find 

 that they are gathering honey-dew, save 

 it by itself and sell it for what it is. 

 We will have to do the grading more 

 than any one else. If we know_ our 

 bees are gathering honey-dew, let it go 

 as honey-dew, and sell it as such. There 

 are always people in my locality who 

 want to buy poor or cheap or dark 

 grades of honey. They like to buy the 

 "lasses" for the children, while they 

 have something better for the older 

 folks. They will buy honey-dew if you 

 tell them what it is; but sell it for 

 what it is. Then as a help to our Na- 

 tional Association members, especially, 

 how can we then protect ourselves under 

 this point which Mr. Arnd brings up? 

 When I send him honey, he, as a deal- 

 er, has to put up a guarantee to sell rriy 

 honey. How is he going to be safe in 

 his guarantee? He ought to have a 

 right to fall back upon the producer, 

 and the producer simply guarantees it as 

 the product of the bee. When they go 

 beyond that as to proof that it is from 

 flowers, I question if we have anything 

 yet that is satisfactory; chemistry is 

 weak on that point. 



A Member — Do the chemists know it? 



Mr. France— Yes, sir; the chemists 



are aware that they are weak on the 



point of a positive proof of strictly 



pure honey from the nectar of flowers 



r;athered and 



or exudation of plants 

 stored by the bee. 



Mr. Meredith— What is the definition 

 of the word "honey-dew" from a bee- 

 keeper's standpoint? 



Mr. France— As a bee-keeper under- 

 stands it, it will be the exudation of m- 

 sects gathered by and stored by the bee 

 in the combs. Some one was speaking 

 about the little white aphids upon the 

 soft maple. We found a good deal 

 of that in Wisconsin, in the last 2 or 

 3 years. The little white aphid is de- 

 stroying the maple-tree. The bees are 

 working upon the leaves, and it was m 

 places, too, where clover was commg 

 in enormously, and it was in many places 

 mixed in the extracted honey. We can 

 not separate it, but must sell it for what 

 it is. 



Dr. Miller— Mr. President, will you 

 read the question again? 



Pres. York— "Should not the bee- 

 keeper be compelled to guarantee to the 

 broker or buyer that his honey will 

 stand the pure-food law test?" 



Dr. Miller— I suppose' that depends 

 upon circumstances. In some cases the 

 buyer would require it. If I were a 

 buyer and wanted the bee-keeper to stand 

 back of me, I would expect him to do 

 it. In some cases I do not think I would 

 want it. For instance, here is a dealer 

 that wants to put out honey iinder his 

 own brand, and he receives his honey, 

 puts it up in packages himself. He can 

 not keep the bee-keeper's guarantee up- 

 on the packages, but the bee-keeper's 

 guarantee can stay on a package that 

 comes from that bee-keeper only, ana 

 when that seal is broken his guarantee 

 does not amount to anything upon it. 

 If the dealer wants to sell it with that 

 original guarantee on it, then he would 

 want the bee-keeper to guarantee it. The 

 thing, you see, will be complicated; but 

 I think I can see that there might be 

 some advantage in that, too. There is 

 the disadvantage of the objection the 

 dealer would make to it. He would 

 say, "I want to sell my honey — I don't 

 want any other man's name upon it, be- 

 cause I want the advantage of all the 

 reputation I get from it." On the other 

 hand, there might be this advantage. 

 There are people who would buy honey 

 more readily with the guarantee of the 

 bee-keeper upon it, just because they 

 knew who the bee-keeper was that it 

 came from. Then, again, there are 

 others that would buy from the dealer 

 because they would kno\y the dealer, 

 and would depend upon him. So. you 

 see the thing has a good many different 

 bearings. I would say, in answer to 

 that question, that any honest bee-keep- 

 er would be wilHng to guarantee his 

 honev. He might guarantee it to the 

 dealer, even if the dealer chose to break 

 it up and put it in packages of his own. 

 I do not believe that I would ever sell 

 honey to any man that I would not 

 guarantee was all right. 



Mr. Arnd — I asked that question, so 

 that a dealer could trace back, an-d if 

 he is "held up" he can go back to the 

 next man, if he buys it from a dealer, 

 and so on to the bee-keeper. 



Mr. Abbott — I would like to say that 

 the producer could not ship it unless he 



