August, 1917 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



601 



the producer ]iuls forward his hest; to a 

 somewhat reguhir trade, in a wholesale way, 

 he sells his indifferent grade, and the poor 

 goes to whoever will'^pay something for it. 

 Now be it known, those indifferent and poor 

 honeys, because they are cheap, find their 

 way into the hands of a certain class of 

 bottlers who proceed to blend them with 

 suitable honeys, and shortly the poor honey 

 emerges, somewhat improved in looks, but 

 seldom any better in flavor, and comes on 

 to the market to compete with the " good." 

 These bottlers are hustlers and their wares 

 are to be found in the hands of most whole- 

 sale gToeers and on the shelves of a vast 

 army of retailers. The prices are attrac- 

 tive because they give a good margin of 

 profit to both the wholesaler and the re- 

 tailer. The goods reach the consumer at 

 a price not much below what he would have 

 to pay for a really nice article, and often 

 far above what the producer sells his good 

 honey for to his home trade. He has un- 

 wittingly put his poor honey in direct com- 

 petition with his good. But the evil stops 

 not there. The majority of purchasers con- 

 sider carefully the amount of their expendi- 

 tures, and the few pennies lower price of 

 the inferior article often decides their se- 

 lection and the poor honey goes on to their 

 table. Even tho they do not know good 

 honey from poor, the result is i^retty much 

 the same, for they do not eat as freely of 

 the poor as they would of the good ; and if 

 perchance they have known good honey, 

 they abandon in disgust the bottled honeys 

 of commerce and turn to other sweets. The 

 poor and indifferent honey of the producer 

 has operated to bring about under-consump- 

 tion. It would have been far better if the 

 poor honey had been left in the hives for 

 the bees. 



Even if all beekeepers could be made to 

 see that, and then try to live up to it, the 

 trouble would not cease, because so many 

 producers do not know when honey js 

 " poor " in a commercial sense. 



I know of not a few fine-colored, heavy- 

 bodied honeys, totally unfit for table trade. 

 One may be acid, another i)eppery, another 

 with some peculiar or repellent flavor, and 

 so on. Now, the j^roducer may become so 

 accustomed to one or another of these that 

 he really likes it and believes it a fine 

 article. Living in some place more or less 

 distant from trade centers, he seldom has the 

 opportunity to sample different honeys or 

 compare them with his own. Even those 

 beekeepers who* frequently visit the markets 

 seldom try any of the honey on sale. Tliey 

 look at the style of the package and (he 

 label, and perhaps ask a price here and 



there, but do not buy and sample it. I 

 seldom see a new brand in the cities in 

 which my honey sells but I try some, and I 

 keep track of how it takes with \he consum- 

 ers. So I know what I am talking about 

 when I tell you of the poor honey and its 

 travels. And when I say all producers 

 would be better off if more of the " off " 

 gxades of honey were left with the bees, and 

 less sugar bought and fed, I am not speak- 

 ing idly. 



Right here I want to call attention to an 

 editorial in the January Gleanings, page 

 10, top of first column. It says : " As a 

 matter of fact, however, every large pro- 

 ducer has a certain amount of dark honey 

 not quite up to grade." Then follows some- 

 thing on imperfect comb honey, and advice 

 to sell both these commodities to transient 

 trade. How in the name of reason the 

 editor could make such a suggestion I can- 

 not conceive. If there is one place above 

 all others where a beekeeper's products 

 should be of the best it is at his door, and 

 the passing stranger is the vei^ one whose 

 palate should be tickled and eye pleased 

 with the nicest honey possible. They scatter 

 over the land, and it makes a vast difference 

 to us whether they speak well or ill of us 

 and our goods. 



I have yet to see any dark or below-grade 

 honey bearing the label of the Editor's com- 

 pany; and if they won't peddle it, certainly 

 the producers should not. 



As expi-essed, the editorial quoted is posi- 

 tively mischievous advice, and I sincerely 

 hope it will be promptly corrected. It is 

 not pleasant to take back water, but I be- 

 lieve the Editor is big enough to do it. 



The beekeeping world does not look on 

 New England as a whole as cutting much 

 figure in honey production, and this partic- 

 ular corner is considered about as poor a 

 pasture as any part of it. However, we 

 have a very diveisified flora, and no small 

 ]iart of it honey-producing. We get here 

 several different flows of " surplus " pro- 

 portions. A few localities give as many 

 as four or even five periods of some surplus 

 production, others only two. Most of the 

 territory where beekeeping is worth while 

 at all gives a more or less continuous yield, 

 sufficient to keep the colonies in fair shape. 

 These conditions are not peculiar to this 

 region but are found over a wide area, only 

 they are not always appreciated. On the 

 other hand we have years of vei-y low yields, 

 or almost total failure, the same as other 

 places do. With that statement of condi- 

 tions, which are not so radically different 

 fi'om Mr. Crane's country (I spent quite a 

 bit of my boyhood in northern Vermont), 



