274 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



July 



to give another fumigation now and 

 then until you want to use the frames. 



If you can put the old hive over a 

 strong colony the bees will clean it 

 up, removing the pollen and any 

 honey that it may contain, as well 

 as the dead bees. After the hives 

 have been cleaned up well they can be 

 piled and fumigated. I have kept 

 hives with frames free from pollen 

 for months without fumigating and 

 had no trouble with them. (Better 

 not risk that too long. — Editor.) 



Kansas. 



CANDIED, GRANULATED OR 

 CRYSTALLIZED HONEY 



By E. M. Cole 



If it is correct to use the term 

 "crystallized honey" I suggest that 

 we use it in talking and writing about 

 honey instead of candied or granulat- 

 ed honey. I think it would make a 

 better impression on the mind of the 

 customers — an idea of something de- 

 sirable instead of something to be 

 avoided. 



It seems to me we ought to avoid 

 using any expressions on our labels 

 that tend to create a doubt in the 

 mind of a customer, such as, "Some 

 people imagine granulated honey is 

 impure," or "Pure honey will granu- 

 late in cool weather, but is in no way 

 injurious." 



Better to simply urge the use of 

 "crystallized" honey. 



Some plan ought to be worked out 

 by our State Associations whereby a 

 producer who cannot supply all his 

 local trade might procure honey from 

 some nearby beekeeper who has an 

 over supply. This would tend to 

 higher prices on the general market 

 and ought to be reflected by better 

 prices for local sales. 



I could have sold last year twice 

 the amount of honey I produced, and 

 handled it all in 60-pound cans, but 

 the two lots I bought for my custom- 

 ers were unsatisfactory, and entirely 

 on account of uncleanliness. When 

 straining honey through cheesecloth, 

 its weight forces a good many parti- 

 cles of beeswax through the cloth, and 

 when the honey is drawn at once into 

 60-pound cans there is soon floating 

 on top of the honey a pretty heavy 

 layer of beeswax refuse ; a sample 

 from the top of one of these cans is 

 anything but inviting to the customer. 



I hope our State Associations adopt 

 some label to be used by its members 

 which will carry an assurance of the 

 quality and cleanliness of all honey 

 sold under that label. 



Iowa. 



HONEY DISTRIBUTION 



By A. G. Woodman 



With stronger beekeepers' associa- 

 tions in the different States it is to be 

 hoped that they will soon get into a 

 position to engage in the packing and 

 distributing of some of the crop of 

 their respective States, at least do 

 enough business in this line to estab- 

 lish prices. This would have a ten- 

 dency to line up the beekeepers who 

 are selling honey in their different lo- 



calities. For instance, a beekeeper 

 about 30. miles from here a few days 

 ago inquired about our present prices. 

 He stated he did not know much 

 about market conditions, but tried to 

 keep in line with our prices. There 

 are any number of beekeepers who 

 would, to a large extent, follow such 

 leadership in case there was reliable 

 guidance for their consideration. 



The above, as a local or State 

 proposition, can be worked out in a 

 national way. The cost of distribu- 

 tion should be figured on large city 

 costs. Some small communities would 

 figure out considerably less; this 

 would be up to the individual. 



To give you some idea of the costs 

 of distribution, we mention a local 

 concern here, located across the 

 street from us. This is the Grand 

 Rapids Daii-y Company, a corporation 

 of farmers organized for the purpose 

 of distributing their product direct 

 from producer to consumer. This 

 was supposed to be a short cut and 

 to benefit both the farmer and the 

 consumer. At the present time they 

 are paying their members 20 cents 

 per gallon for milk. The retail price 

 is 13 cents per quart, or 7 cents per 

 pint, making the retail price 52 and 

 54 cents per gallon. One would nat- 

 urally think that this would be a 

 money-making proposition for the 

 stockholders, the farmers, who pro- 

 duce this milk and sell it to their own 

 organization. However, it has never 

 as yet paid a cent in dividends. Re- 

 cently one of the stockholders offered 

 his $500 worth of stock for $200. 

 From this the beekeepers and others 

 ought to be able to get some idea of 

 the cost of distribution. These peo- 

 ple have a fine building and the best 

 impi'oved machinery for the work. 

 Before this organization was formed 

 there was one large concern engaged 

 in the milk business and a good many 

 individual farmers v/ho were peddling 

 their own product. In organizing this 

 Grand Rapids Dairy Company, all of 

 these milk peddlers were taken into 

 the organization, or forced out of 

 business on account of the producers 

 or farmers who had joined the organi- 

 zation, refusing to sell their milk to 

 them. In this way practically all 

 competition was eliminated, leaving 

 only two large concerns, the farmers' 

 organization, the Gi'and Rapids Dairy 

 Company, and the Sanitary Milk Com- 

 pany, a private concern. 



Based on the cost of distribution of 

 milk as shown above, the retail price 

 of honey in 5 and 10-pound tins 

 should not be less than 100 per cent 

 above carload prices, plus the cost of 

 packages. In other words, 12 1/2 cent 

 honey should not retail for less than 

 25 cents per pound, plus the cost of 

 the packages, or in the neighborhood 

 of 30 cents per pound. We have had 

 some men out selling honey in a 

 house to house canvass the past win- 

 ter. It has cost us about 7 or 8 cents 

 per pound for the selling. The cost 

 of delivery would run from 2% to 

 5 cents per pound, depending upon 

 number of orders, location to one an- 

 other, etc. In figuring on the smaller 

 glass packages, the percentages will 

 have to be more than on the larger. 



The retailer ordinarily wants a larger 

 percentage of profit on a 10 to 25- 

 cent sale than on one of a dollar or 

 more. 



The beekeeper, in order to put the 

 honey business on a substantial basis, 

 should so conduct his business as to 

 protect those who wish to engage in 

 the sale of his product. All large busi- 

 nesses that are successful are based 

 on organization and systematic meth- 

 ods of distribution, with ample re- 

 wards for all who are engaged in the 

 work. The more people the bee- 

 keeper can interest in the sale of his 

 product, the more competition there 

 will be, and competition in buying 

 means a strong market and higher 

 prices. In order to interest people in 

 the sale of honey, these salesmen 

 must have a legitimate working profit, 

 so as to keep them in this line of 

 work. The only way that the bee- 

 keeper can do this is to protect the 

 honey salesman by not selling retail 

 quantities at wholesale prices. 



Production should be considered as 

 one end of the business. ; distribution 

 another end. Each should be so con- 

 ducted as to result in a profitable 

 business by itself. If the beekeeper 

 engages in the distribution of his 

 crop, he should figure what it is worth 

 at wholesale as his cost price. On 

 this he should figure a profit that will 

 pay him for his time and some be- 

 sides to keep the distribution end of 

 the business healthy. 



In discussion at a convention, I 

 once heard a nationally known bee- 

 keeper call another beekeeper a 

 honey peddler, not a honey producer. 

 This beekeeper, producing a compar- 

 atively small amount of honey, was 

 giving his methods of disposing of his 

 crop. He really was devoting more 

 time to the selling end than he was 

 the producing end. He was not se- 

 curing enough margin above the 

 wholesale price to make it a healthy 

 business proposition. There are some 

 who are better fitted for the sale of 

 honey than for the production, and in 

 such cases it would be to their ad- 

 vantage to quit production and de- 

 vote their entire time to distribution. 



For a good many years we were 

 quite extensively engaged in the pro- 

 duction of fruit. Along with other 

 large quantities of all kinds of fruit 

 we produced on an average of one to 

 five thousand bushels of peaches for 

 20 years. At that time we had a lo- 

 cal organization known as the Grand 

 Rapids Fruit Growers' Association. 

 We did not attempt to sell our fruit 

 at retail ourselves, but sold wholesale 

 by the load only. The only thing that 

 we did was to advertise the crop in an 

 effort to get buyers into our Grand 

 Rapids market from many different 

 States and parts of the country. The 

 more buyers we could get in here, the 

 more competition there was, and the 

 stronger the market. I have seen 

 the market go up gradually 10 to 25 

 cents per bushel each morning, until 

 finally prices reached such a height 

 that the market would break. I have 

 seen the price break in a single morn- 

 ing as much as 50 to 75 cents per 

 bushel. From this you will see that 

 there was even danger in getting too 



