18 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



January, 1917 



August 1. It was a rather crude, hand- 

 painted sign, put up at a cross-road cor- 

 ner, an unimproved dirt road running east 

 and west crossing the main north-and- 

 south thorofare at this point. The sign 

 read " Honey for Sale," and after it was 

 an arrow pointing down the side road to 

 the west. The fact was, that the house 

 where the honey was for sale was three- 

 quarters of a mile west of the main im- 

 proved road and on an unimproved dirt 

 road. 



When the editor called at this house to 

 learn the results of roadside marketing of 

 honey the mother of the young man who 

 produced the honey answered his inquiry. 

 She said that the honey-sale sign had been 

 put up at the corners of the road " just to 

 try it out." Within a month the entire 

 product of her son's thirty colonies of bees 

 had been sold from the house. This 

 amounted to about 1000 sections of comb 

 honey and some 50 gallons of extracted, 

 all of very fine quality. No porch display 

 of honey was made at the house, and an 

 attractive apiary was not in sight from 

 the road. The honey had been sold largely 

 to neighbors within a radius of several 

 miles, alt ho some automobilists had left the 

 main road three-quarters of a mile distant 

 and come to the house to buy. One such, 

 a banker living about twenty-five miles 

 distant, had come to the place several times 

 to buy more and more honey. No attempt 

 had been made to make fancy or attractive 

 packages for the honey. The comb-honey 

 sections, when sold, were merely wrapped in 

 paper, and the extracted honey was sold in 

 quart Mason jars, and no labels were used. 

 No particular days were noted as best sales 

 days on the side road, showing that the 

 autos did not cut the largest figure in the 

 18 cents for the pound comb sections and 

 sales at this home. The price secured was 

 $1.35 a gallon for the extracted, the cans 

 furnished by the seller. It was stated 

 that a better price could have been secured. 



When the lady of the house was asked 

 what part the roadside sign had had in 

 bringing about the sales of this entire crop 

 of honey she said emphatically : " Yes, the 

 sign did it entirely. We did nothing to 

 sell it except to put up this sign." And it 

 was a crude one too. 



A boy's roadside success 



Five miles south of the city limits of 

 Cleveland, still on this main thorofare on 

 which Mr. Pritchard lives, and on which 

 Medina is located, is another home where 

 a roadside honey-sale sign was displayed. 

 The picture of the home and the honey- 



sale sign on the telephone pole in front of 

 the residence are shown at the center of 

 the accompanying page whereon various 

 honey-signs are pictured. Here a fifteen- 

 year-old school boy was conducting the 

 roadside honey market. Robinson New- 

 comb is his name, and he is strictly business 

 and enterprise from the bottom of his 

 feet to the last hair at the top of his head. 

 When asked by the editor to tell about his 

 experiences in selling honey from the door 

 of his parents' home he said in brief: 



" I put up the sign beside the road in 

 early August, because I had seen this aid 

 to selling mentioned in Gleanings. I 

 have only nine colonies of bees, and had 

 sold all my honey within a month, and, in 

 fact, had bought some of another man 

 several miles away to supply the trade that 

 ( ontinued after my own honey had all 

 been sold. I sold my comb-honey sections 

 in cartons and my extracted in glass jars, 

 using a label. I got 25 cents a section for 

 comb honey and $1.50 a gallon for the ex- 

 tiacted honey. I also sold a six-pound 

 package of extracted for $1.00. In all I 

 have sold about 20 cases of comb honey 

 and 185 pounds of extracted. I can not 

 say tliat my honey was all of the best qual- 

 ity nor of fancy grade — in fact, I sold 

 what would be graded as second-class, but 

 just as good for eating purposes as any. 

 I had much the largest call for comb honey. 

 I would say that the class of people who 

 bought honey from me was the 'Winton- 

 Six class.' By this I mean my customers 

 were evidently wealthy people. The road- 

 side sign did mighty well for me, but I 

 can tell you I am going to have a bigger sign 

 next year and more honey." 



It is worth mentioning that this blight 

 keen-eyed boy had had the enterprise to 

 foot it crosslots to a neighbor and purchase 

 honey from him which he resold at his 

 home at a good advanc-e in price. This 

 was young Newcomb's first year's experi- 

 ence in keeping bees; and one of the most 

 striking innovations that he had made in 

 his apiculture was to secure large sheet- 

 iron or tin beer-signs that he had torn 

 down wherever he could find them in his 

 vicinity and placed these over the tops of 

 his hives as winter covers. He considered 

 this use of these beer-signs as an improve- 

 ment on their original function, and promis- 

 ed more forays on them. 



OLD people's roadside SELLING. 



Living at about the same distance from 

 Cleveland city limits as does the Newcomb 

 boy, and on a brick-paved road leading off 

 the main thorofare south from the city, 



