Entered at the Postoffice, Fort Pierce, Fla., as second-class mail matter. 



Vol. XVII. 



APRIL, 1907. 



No. 4. 



STATUS OF BEE-KEEPING IN MASSACHUSETTS IN J906. 



BURTON N. GATES. 



A YEAR AGO this last fall, the 

 Worcester County (Mass.) Bee- 

 Keepers' Association undertook 

 to find out how many colonies of 

 bees and the production of honey 

 its members represented. The re- 

 turns were comparatively few; never- 

 theless they were significant. A few 

 generalizations were made and ap- 

 peared in the American Bee-Keeper 

 for December, 1905. 



A similar questionary was sent out 

 to the members of the Worcester so- 

 ciety merely, this past fall; the re- 

 turns have been even more numerous 

 and especially significant. The indi- 

 cations are that bee-keeping in this 

 state is not on the decrease, nor at a 

 stand still; but that it is on the in- 

 crease. 



The questionary was as follows: 



How many bees had you, spring 

 count? Fall count? For what kind 

 of honey do you work? What was 

 your crop of comb? Of extracted? 

 Have you had any signs of unaccount- 

 able dwindling? Of disease? 



Returns have come to hand from 

 41 bee-keepers, of which 38 are of 

 Mass., and figure in the average be- 

 low. About seventy-five of our mem- 



bers who keep bees were given op- 

 portunity to respond; of those, a lit- 

 tle over fifty per cent, have respond* 

 ed, which is rather a higher average 

 than the usual response. The re- 

 maining members, who did not reply, 

 do not represent any great production 

 of bees or of honey, in most in- 

 stances. 



The figures for the basis of the fol- 

 lowing conclusions, as afforded by 38 

 replies are: 



Number of colonies of bees, spring 

 count, 359; Fall count, 527; total pro- 

 duction of comb honey, 10,117 

 pounds; total production of extracted 

 honey, 6,098 pounds; total honey pro- 

 duced, 16,215 pdunds, or eight and 

 nearly one-quarter tons. 



Summarizing these results, we find 

 that the average yield per colony, 

 spring count, is 45 pounds. This ex- 

 ceeds the average of last year's fig- 

 ures by ten pounds per colony; and 

 the figures of the U. S. census of 

 1900, which are 13.0 pounds per col- 

 ony, by 32.0 pounds per colony. The 

 Massachusetts averages of both this 

 year and in 1905, noticeably exceed 

 the census figures of California, 

 which are given as 28.0 pounds per 



