1921 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



487 



the quality and genuineness of my 

 product. He taught me that grocers 

 and buyers in general must be prop- 

 erly interviewed, when they are not 

 too busy to listen, and when they are 

 in good humor. He also explained 

 that many people fail to sell goods 

 because they at once take "no" for 

 an answer, that nine-tenths of the 

 customers are apt to change their 

 minds when properly and pleasantly 

 interviewed. A very fine customer of 

 mine, at St. Louis, one of the best re- 

 tail gi'oeers there, proved this state- 

 ment and regularly gave me an object 

 lesson, unconsciously; for after hav- 

 ing heard and appreciated the advice 

 ol my drummer friend, I resolved to 

 follow it and "hang on." Well, this 

 grocer would invariably discourage 

 me when first intei'viewed; he did not 

 want any more honey, he had too 

 much trouble selling it; it would occa- 

 sionally leak on his counters; his 

 clerks did not know how to recom- 

 mend it; he had a thousand objec- 

 tions. Sometimes I would leave him 

 for a few hours and come back and 

 try again. It was all in pleasant con- 

 versation, as if honey were only an in- 

 cident of the visit. Slowly his argu- 

 ments would lessen and he would usu- 

 ally end by giving me an order for a 

 ton or more, in all sizes of packages. 

 This would happen in the same way, 

 more or less, every year, and it usu- 

 ally took a whole day, but I made the 

 sale; it was worth while. He was al- 

 ways sure that he secured the lowest 

 price that I would be willing to make. 



Most grocers are good men to deal 

 with. But we must convince them 

 that our goods are pure, that they are 

 cleanly put up, that they may guaran- 

 tee them to their customers, and that 

 we will gladly take back any goods 

 which have the least defect. I re- 

 member taking back one tin of honey, 

 because a fastidious lady had found a 

 bee's wing in it. 



When this matter is thoroughly un- 

 derstood, there is but little difliculty 

 in selling honey. Honey! Who says 

 there is anything better than honey? 

 All we need, to secure sales, is to con- 

 vince the people of its purity, and this 

 can be done if we only try. 



We always exchange any shop-worn 

 goods for fresh ones, with the cus- 

 tomer who sells our honey. A soiled 

 label makes the package unsaleable. 

 Put yourself in the retailer's place 

 and treat him right. 



Advertising. — This does not always 

 cost large sums of money. One of 

 our leading educators whom you all 

 know, told me of his own father sell- 

 ing thousands of pounds of honey, 

 right at his home, because his apiary 

 is along one of the most traveled 

 highways in the United States, and he 

 has a little sign, close by the apiary, 

 of "HONEY FOR SALE." He has 

 to buy several tons of honey to sup- 

 plement his own crop. The hives of 

 bees do the advertising for him and 

 the traveling public, of course, takes 

 it for granted that those bees produce 

 honey. If we could take a hundred 

 colonies of bees with us when we sell 

 honey, we would sell ten times more. 



Our largest local sales began after 

 a meeting of the Warsaw Horticul- 



tural Society, at our home, in 1884. 

 This Society was next to the State 

 Horticultural Association, in import- 

 ance, though only a "local." They 

 met successively at the homes of their 

 members, for practical demonstra- 

 tions and lectures. For the n acting 

 in question, they had secured the ser- 

 vices of a leading horticultural lec- 

 turer, Mr. Periam, then editor of the 

 Prairie Farmer. We had not given a 

 thought to the possibility of this meet- 

 ing being good advertising for us, al- 

 though we had agreed to do some 

 honey extracting before the members 

 and give an apiary demonstration. 

 Fortunately for us, a live business 

 man of Keokuk, a city of 14,000, 

 urged the merchants of the city to at- 

 tend this meeting, saying that they 

 would be well repaid for their time. 

 We had a throng, not only of Illinois 

 horticulturists, but of merchants in 

 all sorts of products, some 500 peo- 

 ple; and our apiary and our extract- 

 ing were the town talk for several 

 days. Most of these people saw 

 something entirely new to them, and 

 spread the information voluntarily 

 and cheerfully. It was a great suc- 

 cess, and we had not foreseen the re- 

 sults in increased sales. 



I am telling this, simply to show 

 what good may be done by judicious 

 advertising, sometimes with little ex- 

 pense. If you have the honey, if you 

 put it up in attractive shape, very 

 clean, of proper sizes for the demand, 

 and if you hustle a little, you can sell 

 tons and tons of it, at profitable 

 prices. It is true that not all can do 

 it, because not all are located where 

 ic is possible to reach the customer. 

 Beekeepers in the localities where 

 every acre is a honey producer, where 

 cities are scarce, must use other 

 means of advertising. I will speak of 

 this a little farther. 



We need a good label, but to me a 

 good label is not necessarily an ex- 

 pensive one. It must exhibit the 

 word "HONEY" in large letters. My 

 reasoning is that people do not go to 

 the grocery to buy honey as they go 

 to buy butter, potatoes, sugar, flour, 

 eggs, etc. This is because honey has 

 never been plentiful enough to be 

 always on the grocer's shelves. But 

 America consumes fully 40 pounds of 

 sugar for evei-y pound of honey, and 

 everybody knows that honey is the 

 best of sweets. They need to be re- 

 minded of the existence of honey. 

 How many people buy honey regu- 

 larly? One in a hundred? Hardly. 

 That is why a showy "honey" label 

 does better work than an ornamental 

 one in which that word does not show 

 at sight. No need of putting a lot of 

 printing on it. They don't read it. 

 But we can enlighten them by hand- 

 ing to them some printed explana- 

 tions, profusely illustrated, so they 

 may become interested. This has 

 proven a good thing on both sides of 

 the Atlantic. Although granulated 

 honey has a better standing in Europe 

 than it has here, it is necessary, there 

 as here, to explain that not all honey 

 is alike, that the man who has eaten 

 buckwheat honey must not think that 

 clover honey is adulterated, or that 

 basswood honey is made with some 



sort of lemonade, as suggested to me 

 once. Until one goes about, selling 

 honey, one does not realize the pro- 

 found ignorance of the masses on the 

 subject. If granulated honey is less 

 appreciated here than in Europe, it 

 is due to our own producers who, 

 many of them, seem to be ashamed of 

 their honey when it granulates. Yet 

 no other product than pure honey 

 possesses exactly this peculiarity, so 

 it is an evidence of purity. 



The beekeepers in the favored re- 

 gions of large honey production, but 

 who are at a disadvantage when they 

 wish to sell it, need to use printer's 

 ink, away from home, and organize in 

 associations, to sell through a center, 

 as they do indeed. But all beekeep- 

 ers who have honey for sale, in any 

 quantity, need the co-operation of 

 others, not only in their locality, but 

 in their State and in a country-wide 

 organization, a National League, so 

 they may learn the conditions of the 

 crop, the prospect of the markets, 

 the probable prices, etc. The lack of 

 co-operation, in the old days, was the 

 greatest drawback. Although we 

 tried to get a general understanding 

 with our neighbor beekeepers, some of 

 them would inquire indirectly about 

 our prices, in order to undersell us, 

 claiming that they could not make 

 sales unless they did so. It is a great 

 mistake, for it forces prices down- 

 wards. 



ITALY FEATURES THE BEE 



We are indebted to Dr. Alberico 

 Molinari for a small Italian coin with 

 a honeybee sucking at a flower, 

 shown on one side. The picture 

 shown herewith reproduces the coin 



t# J(; 



Face of Italian coin showing honeybee 



at very nearly exact size. The value 

 is equal to about two cents in our 

 money. We would like very much to 

 know whether any other country has 

 ever featured the honeybee on any 

 coin, paper money, postage stamp or 

 official documents. Information on 

 this point will be appreciated. 



DO BEES HEAR? 



By J. H. Tichenor 

 The question, "Do Bees Hear?" 

 page 399, is interesting. I have long 

 ago concluded that they do hear, but 

 admit that there is no positive proof. 

 Let us make some comparisons among 

 the animals and birds; do cows hear? 

 Let me go out and call my cow, and 

 if in hearing distance, she comes. Let 

 any other member of the family call, 

 and she will not move a hoof. Hence, 

 the cow not only hears, but can dis- 

 tinguish voices. Do hens hear? They 

 come from all quarters at my call. 



