44 First Annual Report 



unfit for table use in a majority of cases, ft was only in extraordinary 

 seasons that a certain amount of nice white comb honey could be obtained 

 in broken and irregular pieces and sold in jars, or even pails and tubs. But 

 the strained honey usually marketed was so uniformly dark and dirty that 

 when we offered the first honey that we extracted, in 1869, to a Keokuk 

 druggist, he eyed the sample suspiciously and said : 'I don't want any such 

 stuff.' It was the very best quality of clover honey, but the man evidently 

 took it for granted that it was sugar syrup, as he had never seen such bright 

 strained honey before. 



"The first success by the new methods created an exctiement, and many 

 people rushed into bee-keeping to rush out of it, after a short trial, but the 

 business underwent a great change. Bee-keeping became quite a specialty, 

 in a few sections of the country the field is now sufficiently occupied to show 

 what can be achieved, or rather what might be done if there were enough 

 bees and bee-keepers to harvest the greater part of the honey that is pro- 

 duced by the flowers, and which positively goes to waste, being either 

 reabsorbed by the plant that produced it, or otherwise returned to the soil 

 whence it came. 



"But the quantity produced to-day is probably equal to a ton for every 

 pound that was produced thirty years ago. It took twenty years before the 

 dealers in the large cities could be educated to call extracted honey by any 

 other than the old appellation of strained honey, and it is only six or eight 

 years since there are any quotations of extracted honey at all. Even at this 

 date, there are comparatively few people who know the great difference that 

 exists between the one and the other. 



"The resources of our country are immense, and 'the fields now well 

 occupied by bee-keepers are infinitesimal. To convey an idea of the 

 resources in our State, Illinois, it is only necessary to speak of our own 

 crops. The average yield of honey from our bees is about 22,00a pounds, 

 and we occupy but a few square miles of territory. In the season of 1883 the 

 honey actually harveated in Hancock county was estimated at about 200,000 

 pounds. Thirty six thousand of this was our own crop and the county did 

 not contain one-tenth of the bees that could have been kept profitably upon 

 it, yet at this rate, the crop of the State would iiave been 15,000,000 pounds. 

 There are thousands of low mashy lands that produce nothing but wild 

 honey plants, and on which tons after tons of honey are wasted every year, 

 waiting for the bee man with his little servants. 



"The theory of the influence of bees on the fertilization of flowers, and 

 consequently on the amount of the crop, has been so well demonstrated by 

 Darwin and his disciples that it would be useless to expatiate on it. 



"Although the honey resources of Illinois cannot compare with those of 

 California, yet, as the flowers succeed one another, from early spring till fall^ 

 with the exception of a short stop in summer, the crop of honey is as reliable 

 here as any other farm harvest. 



