1897. 



THE AMERICAN BEE KEEPER. 



171 



Valley and west of there to Buffalo, 

 and there are honey producers nearly 

 all over the state. In Otsego and 

 Herkimer counties there are some 

 bee-keepers who have as many as 

 from 600 to 1,000 hives of bees each. 

 In a good season each of these men 

 will ship from 20,000 to 50,000 

 pounds of honey to the market. The 

 greater part of the New York honey 

 is produced from the bloom of white 

 clover and linden or basswood trees. 

 The bees work in the clover in the 

 latter part of June and the first half 

 of July, and then the linden begins 

 to bloom. Vermont, Pennsylvania 

 and the Western States all produce 

 honey in considerable quantities, and 

 principally from white clover and lin- 

 den blossoms. About half of their 

 product comes to the market strained, 

 and the rest in the comb. Colorado, 

 Utah and Arizona have taken to bee- 

 keeping within five years, and twenty- 

 five carloads of strained honey were 

 shipped from Mariposa county, Ari- 

 zona, last year. All of their honey is 

 made from the alfalfa bloom. 



"From the Apalachicola River 

 region in Florida comes some of the 

 finest honey in the world. It is 

 gathered from the tupelo blossoms. It 

 is golden yellow in color, and of a 

 delicious flavor. Along the Indian 

 River the bees work among the man- 

 grove blossoms, and make a large 

 amount of very white honey, but this 

 has little flavor. Then there is honey 

 from Cuba, but most of this is 

 gathered wild, and it is not of high 

 quality." 



All the honey that comes to the 

 market in the comb is sold for table 

 use and a large quantity of the ex- 

 tracted honey is packed in glass and 



sold for the same purpose. The dark- 

 er, coarser flavored honey is used in 

 enormous quantities by cracker mak- 

 ers, bakers, confectioners, and drug- 

 gists for fancy crackers, honey jum- 

 bles, candies and medicines. 



Only an expert can detect the deli- 

 cate differences between many of the 

 honies. Those gathered from clover, 

 alsike, alfalfa, white sage, thistle, 

 raspberry, linden, mangrove and 

 many of the other summer flowers 

 are light in color. That from buck- 

 wheat is always dark and is the strong- 

 est of all in flavor. People of New 

 York, Pennsylvania and Connecticut 

 like this, but it finds little sale for 

 table use elsewhere. The yellow 

 honey is gathered from the summach 

 in California and in the Eastern and 

 Middle States from apple blossoms, 

 the golden rod, and many of the fall 

 flowers. 



The bees from a single hive will 

 range over a space several miles in 

 diameter, and where large numbers 

 of hives are kept it is the custom to 

 place them in clusters four or five 

 miles apart. A hive of 20,000 bees, 

 it is estimated, will gather and store 

 one pound of honey a day. From 

 eighty to one hundred pounds of 

 honey to a hive is a good yield in 

 good seasons, although there are bee- 

 keepers in Florida and California who 

 have gathered crops of 300 pounds to 

 a hive. A conservative estimate of 

 the number of bees that work to 

 gather the yearly honey crop is three 

 thousand millions, and to estimate 

 the distances which they travel eveiy 

 summer while at their work would 

 take one into figures such as only as- 

 tronomers use. The work of the bees 

 keeps many hundreds of men busy in 



