422 
GRADING COMB HONEY 
Honey sent by the Ontario Beekeepers’ Association to the late King Edward. Note .—This wonld grade as 
Extra Fancy by the Root grading rules. 
lias personally inspected thousands of 
pounds of comb honey that had gone to 
market, and it is certainly surprising how 
some of the intelligent producers will mix 
the fancy among the No. 1 and the No. 1 
among the fancy, and even go so far as to 
put choice among the fancy. This disgusts 
the buyer or commission merchant, and, of 
course, he charges up the cost of regrading 
to the producer. Or if he does not grade 
the honey over, it is sent out directly 
to the consumer or retail merchant, who 
will pay at least two or three cents a pound 
less because the honey is of such uneven 
quality. 
In order to get the largest price possible 
for comb honey, it will be necessary to 
grade it; and the more thoroly and honest¬ 
ly the work is done, the higher will be the 
price secured. If one is careless in grading 
there will be inferior sections mixed in with 
sections of a higher grade; and, if the com¬ 
mission man or buyer discovers this, he is 
likely to “knock down the price” of the 
whole easeful to the price of the inferior 
sections. It is very important to have 
every section in a case of the same grade. 
Not much will be accomplished if there 
are a dozen different systems or rules of 
grading. Various rules have been adopted 
by the National Beekeepers' Association; 
but they have never been accepted by the 
large buyers and commission men of the 
country; nor have they received the gen¬ 
eral indorsement of even the beekeepers 
themselves. The great difficulty encoun¬ 
tered has been the diversity of conditions 
and variety of notions on the part of the 
producer. For example, one section of the 
country will have only white honey; an¬ 
other will have largely amber and dark. 
One locality prefers double-tier shipping 
cases; another single-tier. Some beekeepers 
prefer plain sections, and others want bee- 
way. The Colorado beekeepers prefer 
double-tier cases and 1%-keeway square 
sections. Under these diverse conditions it 
is a little difficult to get an agreement on 
one set of rules covering the whole coun¬ 
try. However, the Colorado beekeepers 
