1918 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



377 



found some delicious strained honey 

 put up in pint Mason jars with pieces 

 of comb honey inserted. The grocer 

 said, by way of guarantee of quality, 

 that it was produced in his own api- 

 ary in the suburbs of the town. 



If there is anything more interest- 

 ing to the average beekeeper than 

 bees, it is the other beekeeper, who, 

 from the peculiar conditions in his 

 locality has adopted a method and 

 practice that would seem to be at 

 wide variance with the orthodox 

 teachings of the text-books, and has 

 made a success of it. I was much in- 

 terested in this apiary, for it was of 

 the box-hive type, and the owner 

 could give what appeared to be good 

 reasons for the practice. Briefly told, 

 his experience was that he had gone 

 into the business in a small way, us- 

 ing "patent" hives, as all hives other 

 than box are called locally, and that 

 the bees could not protect themselves 

 from the ravages of the caterpillar 

 (presumably the bee-moth.) The re- 

 sult was that he was soon out of the 

 bee business, thoroughly discouraged. 

 On the advice of an extensive and 

 successful Florida beekeeper, he 

 tried again, using the type, or types, 

 of hives shown in the pictures, with 

 success. 



The hive standing on end is the 

 parent hive of the yard, kept for in- 

 crease only. No honey is ever taken 

 from it and it is allowed to swarm 

 without restraint. The horizontal 

 hives are the ones from which the 

 honey crop is harvested or, to use 

 the local term, are "robbed." The 

 method of robbing, which is never 

 done after the month of May, is as 

 follows : The board forming the 

 back end of the hive, and which is 

 but lightly nailed, is taken off and 

 smoke used to drive the bees from 

 the first comb. A shallow square pan 

 is inserted under the comb and with 

 a thin blade the comb is cut from the 

 sides and top of the hive, laid back 

 on the pan and removed. Smoke is 

 used again and the process repeated 

 until the desired amount of honey 

 has been taken, when the back board 

 is replaced and the bees allowed to 

 refill the space with honey. It may 

 be easier to tell the story than to do 

 the work, but it does not look like a 

 very difficult job, after all. 



When it comes to low cost of 

 equipment and low upkeep, the box- 

 hive beekeeper certainly has two 

 strong points in his favor, and the 

 reason for so many unkind pen jabs 

 going his way may yet be found in 

 the fact that he never writes for the 

 bee papers. 



Harrisville, Pa. 



How Co-operative Associations Dis- 

 tribute and Sell 



By Richard C. Gano 



THE few honey-marketing asso- 

 ciations now in existence have 

 not yet advanced to the point 

 where they require more than the 

 simplest form of distributing and 

 selling organization. The Colorado 

 association, the Idaho-Oregon, the 

 Texas group, all maintain a single 

 central office, and the general man- 



ager is the man who circularizes the 

 trade, thus finding carload buyers, 

 and who superintends the shipping, 

 which sometimes, as in the case of 

 Colorado, takes place mainly from 

 one central shipping point, and in 

 others takes place from various local 

 shipping points. 



Such plans are admirable because 

 of their very simplicity, replacing the 

 more costly and complicated method 

 of selling through numerous commis- 

 sion men or to traveling buyers. It 

 must be remembered that the pri- 

 mary idea behind every co-operative 

 marketing movement is just exactly 

 this simplifying of selling and dis- 

 tributing ,and nothing else. So that 

 to say an association's selling ma- 

 chinery is simple is the highest com- 

 pliment one can pay it. This very 

 simplicity accounts for the low sell- 

 ing cost — in Colorado around 3 per 

 cent, in Idaho last year 3 l /z per cent. 



But the associations are destined 

 to grow, and this means that their 

 selling and distributing machinery is 

 also destined to grow. Consequently, 

 it may be found interesting to take a 

 little look into the selling and dis- 

 tributing methods of the larger farm- 

 ers' associations of the country. 



The fact of the matter is that there 

 is only one kind of sales organiza- 

 tion for perishable products. The 

 honey concern with one central sales 

 office, the cranberry association, with 

 two; the California Fruit Growers', 

 with over fifty — all use exactly the 

 same system, in a broad sense. 



The association, large or small, 

 usually finds it desirable to have a 

 personal representative in each big 

 central market to which it sells or 

 wants to sell. The new association 

 may have only its one office for a 

 time, but as business with certain 

 cities becomes heavy it begins to 

 find it wants a man on the spot, to 

 investigate complaint... perhaps to 

 report on condition of shipments 

 coming in, and finally to drum up 

 trade. Circularizing from the central 

 office is excellent, as far as it goes; 

 but where a market presents great 

 possibilities it usually pays to work 

 it intensively with either a salaried 

 salesman devoting his whole time to 

 it, or a broker devoting part time. 



This is the way the greatest of all 

 farmers' marketing association sys- 

 tems has gradually grown up. At the 

 start it stationed salaried represen- 

 tatives in New York and Chicago. 

 Today it is represented in every car- 

 load market in the United States 

 and in the big central markets of a 

 few foreign countries, and has over 

 50 distributing and sales offices. The 

 offices in the United States are 

 grouped into six sales divisions, a 

 division salej manager being in 

 charge of each. These offices, some 

 of which have not one but five or six 

 employes, are personally in touch 

 with every carload buyer of citrous 

 fruit in the United States. A typical 

 office staff is that at Chicago, where 

 are the Division Manager, Assistant 

 District Manager, three inspectors 

 and four employes. When this of- 

 fice was first established no one 

 knew about it. The manager had to 

 make himself known by calling on 



A small (.art of the a|>i 



