Early Honey Sales

52,000 Pounds Last Year

(article from the 1970-1971 Annual Report for Saint John’s School of Alberta)

Honey Production in 1971

Apris Mellifera in its uncounted thousands has provided the base for a program at St. John’s of Alberta which enabled students to gain some special knowledge and experience and also returned a cash profit to the school.

For those who wonder, that means bees. They produced 52,000 pounds of honey which students processed, packaged, promoted and sold door-to-door at a net profit of about $5,000 last year.

The boys started the year with 100 hives, but the process of extracting the honey from the combs proved both time-consuming and wasteful. Therefore the honey is now bought in bulk from neighbouring farmer Don Scheideman and others filtered, bottled and labeled by the boys. Mr. Scheideman bought the school’s hives and extracting equipment.

In the first part of the 1970-71 year, sales were made by small groups of students in Edmonton each day, and by Christmas had reached 20,000 pound for $10,000. After the holiday the program of one-day sales blitzes in Edmonton, Calgary, Re Deer and Saskatoon sold 32,000 pounds for $16,000.

All students took part in these and for some reason the Grade 8 classes regularly outsold the higher grades. Salesman of the year was Robert Fogg, 14, of Winnipeg, far outstripping everyone else. He romped ahead with a record $144.50 in sales in a single day.

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