860 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Aug. 15 



appearance that we are dealing with. The 

 eating quaUty has to be considered sepa- 

 rately. This choice grade would take in the 

 poorest part of what is now covered by No. 

 1 and the better part of No. 2. 



We now come to the fourth grading, which 

 is light-weight, and this speaks for itself. 

 In an experience covering over twenty 

 years, we have used these terms almost 

 from the start, and found that they were 

 readily understood by the purchaser; and 

 the difference in the grades was sufficiently 

 plain to make itself clear to one who was a 

 novice in the business. 



This is our own experience in our own 

 particular market, and we trust that it may 

 shed some light on the subject. 



Blake, Scott & Lee Co. 



Boston, Mass., June 2. 



FEWER GRADES MORE DESIRABLE. 



Mr. Editor:— The writer has been reading 

 your letters on the grading of honey. So far 

 as our market is concerned. A No. 1 honey 

 will bring as much as "fancy" when it 

 comes to selling in a jobbing way. Now and 

 then one might find a grocer with a strictly 

 fancy trade who might pay ten or fifteen 

 cents per case more for the fancy honey 

 than for the No. 1 ; but this is an exception 

 to the rule. We do a strictly jobbing busi- 

 ness, and find that, by classsifying our A 

 No. 1 honey, and honey marked "fancy" 

 under one head, we never have any com- 

 plaints. "Strictly No. 1" is the term we 

 mostly use, as we hardly believe in any one 

 quoting any thing as "fancy," that word 

 signifying something different from what 

 almost every person uses. We beheve that, 

 the fewer grades of honey there are, the 

 better it is for both the receiver and the 

 producer of honey. 



We ourselves believe all honey should be 

 classed according to weight, the white honey 

 as heavy, medium, or light, and amber the 

 same way. In this way we beheve the 

 honey-producer would get more money out 

 of his honey than he does at present. The 

 popular demand seems to be for heavy- 

 weight honey, and in several instances we 

 have been able to get from 15 to 25 cents 

 per case more on account of the weight 

 when the quality, according to the grading 

 given in Gleanings, would not grade over 

 No. 1 stock. 



The marketing of honey in this section 

 during the last few years has been done by 

 the case and not by the pound. The dealers 

 seem to think this a better way to buy, as 

 it saves figuring, and we ourselves find this 

 method more satisfactory, as hardly any two 

 scales weigh alike, and this causes more or 

 less dispute and claims for shortage. 



At one time last winter we had on our 

 honey-platform five or six different styles 

 of sections. We believe the bee-men should 

 work in unison, and adopt a uniform section- 

 case. Where we have shipments from 

 twenty-five or thirty shippers, all put up in 

 different sizes of cases, you can readily see 



how hard it is to fill an order for twenty-five 

 or thirty cases and give parties a uniform- 

 sized case. The demand in this section 

 seems to be for a twenty-four-section case. 

 C. C. Clemons & Co. 

 Kansas City, Mo. , June 2. 



] It would be hard to find a greater diver- 

 sity of opinion than we have here on these 

 grading-rules. It appears, too, that no two 

 of our commission men follow exactly the 

 same rules, and that no two bee-keepers who 

 do attempt to follow the same rules grade 

 alike on the same grading. One commission 

 man wants more grades and another wants 

 less. The Bee-keepers' Review has been rec- 

 ommending one set of rules and Gleanings 

 has been putting at the head of its honey 

 column another. It begins to look as if ev- 

 ery bee-keeper and every market has his or 

 its own system of grading. This is not as 

 it should be; for under present conditions 

 the quotations for one market can not be 

 compared with those of another. If, for ex- 

 ample, I am offered 15 cents for Fancy in 

 New York, and 16 cents for the same grade 

 in Chicago, with equal freights I send to 

 Chicago. I then learn that Tuy Fancy is 

 only No. 1 in Chicago, and this brings only 

 14 cents. Then I wish I had shipped to 

 New York. I send the next lot to the East- 

 ern city and get my price. It is certainly 

 demoralizing to the trade to have such con- 

 fusion. It is high time that we struck at 

 more uniformity. As it is we are depress- 

 ing prices by this way of doing. Our col- 

 umns are open to any discussion that will 

 get us out of this mix-up.— Ed.] 



THE MARKETING OF HONEY. 



The Selling of Candied Honey in the Toronto 



Market ; the Folly of Rushing Honey 



off to the Large Centers. 



BY R. F. HOLTERMANN. 



Your article on " De Luxe Honey for the 

 Market" interests me very much. It is 

 quite a few years since I inaugurated the 

 system of selling granulated honey in paper. 

 The matter of exhibiting this form of honey 

 is one thing; to put it on sale for the public 

 is quite another. Although several barrels 

 of this granulated or candied honey were 

 sold in a small store in a very short time, it 

 was not followed up by me. A distribution 

 of responsibilities, and much work in hand, 

 prevented me from again taking this meth- 

 od of marketing in hand, a description of 

 which, with a picture of a barrel of honey in 

 a grocer's window, was given in Gleanings 

 some years ago. This has grown until the 

 last winter, of which I will now give my ex- 

 perience. 



Let me say you have now gone further 

 than I have, and I believe your system is the 

 correct way. I had thought a year ago of 

 cutting the honey into blocks with a butter- 

 cutter, but not of putting them up in the 

 neat package you have designed. I find that 



