Fcbriiaiy, 1909. 



American Hee Journal 



bnfribufed 



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Selling Honey as a Food 



BY C. P. DADANT. 



May I be permitted to deviate from 

 liie common monthly discussion of 

 American methods in apicuUure. and 

 talk a little about what some other 

 countries are doing? This time it will 

 be about the sale of honey and its spread 

 among tlie people as an article of food 

 of the very best kind. Our own Na- 

 tional Association has given prizes for 

 essays to be inserted in the newspapers 

 concerning the value of honey as food. 

 This is good. But an object lesson in 

 the sale of honey is better, especially 

 in cities. 



The January number of the Swiss 

 "Bulletin de la Societe Romande D' Api- 

 culture" contains an article from the 

 Progres Apicole on the honey-fair, at 

 Lausanne. Some years ago I called the 

 attention of bee-keepers to this Swiss 

 method of advertising honey. It would 

 appear to be successful, since it is con- 

 tinued from year to year. This "honey- 

 fair" is also called "honey-market," and 

 was held in a small Park, X/O feet wide 

 liy 500 feet in length, situated, in the 

 center of the city; it was held simul- 

 taneously with a flower- fair, which 

 lakes place every year at the same time 

 .\ugust 24th and 25th ; under three rows 

 of large hasswood trees which shelter 

 the exhibitors from the rays of the sun. 

 M night, a line of Venetian or Chinese 

 lanterns hung along the walk and among 

 the tree gives a fairy appearance to this 

 exhibit which is continued until eleven 

 o'clock at night. 



The honey exhibit is made under the 

 management of the bee-keepers' asso- 

 ciation, and is kept by only three or 

 four persons. It is very much as our 

 State Fair exhibits, as far as I can see, 

 with this difference, however, that it 

 is independent of any fair except the 

 flower-fair already mentioned. Honey 

 and flowers go well together. 



The honey-fair is advertised some 

 tim^ beforehand. Both comb and ex- 

 tracted honey are on sale, all put up in 

 the most attractive manner, and the 

 prices are established by the bee-keep- 

 ers' association. The result is that many 

 consumers, among all classes of society, 

 have their attention drawn to this ex- 

 hibit. It is the object of an evening 

 walk, and the family go there as they 

 might go to the show. The knowledge 

 that the purity of the honey on exhibi- 

 tion is in a manner guaranteed by the 

 association of bee-keepers, removes any 

 possible distrust of its purity, and my 

 readers surely know how easy it is to 

 sell good honey when the people who 

 buy it have no doubt about its purity. 



.\s I understand it, the sales are not 

 large at these honey-fairs — a few thou- 

 sand pounds only. But they serve as an 

 introduction between the consumer and 

 the producer ; they remove the barrier 

 which has caused the consumer to ask 

 himself whether he can depend upon 

 what he buys as pure, siinply because he 

 usually gets it from a man, the retailer, 

 who often does not himself know 

 whence it came. If the retailer does 

 not know the producer of the honey, 

 and has any doubt about its purity, he 



■ is ill-fitted to recommend it. When 

 the consumer and the producer meet in 

 the way mentioned, there is a mutual 

 confidence established, and a demand is 

 created which will need but little urging 

 to be continued indefinitely. 



Nothing more than a mention is need- 

 ed to remind our bee-keepers that it is 

 the first sale to a family which is the 

 most difficult. In thousands of cases, 

 people pass by an opportunity to buy 

 honey, without purchasing, because their 

 attention is not especially drawn to this 

 matter, as well as to the healthfulness 

 of honey, which, by the way, no one 

 thinks of doubting if only he is certain 

 that it is pure honey he has the op- 

 portunity to secure. 



May I say that, not only in honey 

 sales, but in the advertising of many 

 other products, we might profitably look 

 to Europe? We now have what is 

 called "street-fairs," organized in many 

 small cities, with the view of drawing 

 the farmers and pushing sales. The 

 dry-goods stores, the clothing and shoe 

 stores, the photographers, restaurants, 

 etc., do a large business, because the 

 country people are attracted from miles 

 around to these popular gatherings. 

 There they see exhibits of trained dogs, 

 heavy-weight lifters, jugglers, and side- 

 shows of all kinds, many of which are 

 fakes. 

 These street fairs are copied from 



'those of Europe, but in Europe they 

 have at the same time a flower exhibit, 

 a vegetable exhibit, a horse-fair, a cat- 

 tle fair; not as in our county fairs, for 

 exhibition of only the best of all breeds, 

 with premiums, but to sell or buy what- 

 ever you may wish to acquire (* get 

 rid of in your line. Not only you may 

 buy there, on a stated day, any kind of 

 a horse, cow or pig, chickens or bees, 

 eggs, butter, honey because you are sure 

 to find the greatest possible selection, 

 in high or low prices according to qual- 

 ity, but farm hands go to find employ- 

 ers, carrying a green twig in their hat 

 as a token that they want employment. 

 The country trades with the city, and 

 the country people trade with each 

 other. It is a general concourse where 

 all come, either to make sales or spend 



money, and is very much more useful 

 than our noisy modern .'\mcrican street- 

 fair. 



In this country the great distances 

 originally between farms and cities com- 

 pelled us to resort to advertising, but 

 the present growing aggregation of peo- 

 ple in small centers will sooner or later 

 induce us to use these most convenient 

 methods of finding sales for our prod- 

 ucts, where the middleman cannot do 

 what is readily done between individuals. 

 Neither is this injurious to the middle- 

 man, for when exchanges are thus be- 

 gun, they are usually continued by the 

 help of this same middleman, who can 

 always be found at the center of busi- 

 ness, when the farmer has returned to 

 Iiis daily occupations. 



It is far better to create a market 

 for our honey among our own people, 

 through such local exhibits, than to 

 crowd our produce on the big markets 

 where it comes back to our dealers in 

 poorer shape, with additional charges 

 attached for the profit of the commis- 

 sion man, who must live as well as the 

 producer. If a little more of this local 

 market hunting were practised it would 

 have a tendency to stiffen prices, for 

 it is the large market that sets' the 

 pace, and too much is now sent to the 

 large markets. 



The race is to the swift. The man 

 who uses his ingenuity to sell his crop 

 will always distance the man who waits 

 for the market to come to him. Let us 

 not neglect any of the means that are 

 in our reach for success. 



Hamilton, 111. 



Punching End-Bars and Wir- 

 ing Frames 



BY G. C. GREINER. 



As it is the general opinion of the 

 more experienced portion of our bee- 

 keeping fraternity, that the use of full 

 sheets of comb foundation in the brood- 

 chamber is the better way, we may as 

 well accept their advice and follow 

 suit, except in certain cases, when nar- 

 row starters would suit me better. 



To make the use of full sheets prac; 

 tical, our main ' frames have to be 

 wired, and this again makes the punch- 

 ing of end-bars compulsory. As far 

 as I know, we have not yet an auto- 

 matically working machine, that will 

 punch end-bars and wire frames at 

 wholesale rate, but both jobs have to 

 be done one at a time, by hand. The 

 various devices for punching, or rather 

 drilling or boring, that have been 

 described and represented by drawings 

 in different bee-papers, are, in my 

 opinion, a needless complication in their 

 construction, and a waste of time in 

 their operation. Any tool that will work 

 on the boring plan must necessarily be 

 more cumbersome and slower in its 

 operation than the one that can do the 

 work with a singla push of the hand. 



Unless we get a machine something 

 like a corn-sheller, that will admit turn- 

 ing in end-bars by the crateful. and 

 then crank them out corn-cob fashion, 

 the handiest and speediest tool for 

 punching is a common shoemaker's 

 pegging awl, of rather smallish size. 



