HOITETBEES AlTD HOKEY PEODUCTION'. 25 



TOTAL PRODUCTION OF HONEY, BY DECADES, SINCE 1859. 



According to the census figures the production of honey in 

 the year 1859, the first in which this inquiry was made, 

 was in round figures 23,000,000 pounds, a very respectable 

 figure compared with the later reports, but unfair in com- 

 parison with the figures of recent decades, because of the 

 great increase in the relative number of commercial pro- 

 ducers whose crops do not figure in the census returns. 

 In the year 1869 the production was reduced to about 

 15,000,000 pounds, due no doubt in large part to the general 

 disorganization and loss incident to the Civil War. The 

 year 1879 saw a recovery to 26,000,000 and the record for 

 1889 was the highest of any year reported by the census, 

 almost 64,000,000 pounds. For 1889, 61,000,000 pounds 

 were reported and for 1909 only 55,000,000. The latter was 

 a year of poor honey production in the Central and Southern 

 States. 



The most striking feature of the figures, given by States 

 in Table VII, is the increase in honey production in the 

 Western States and particularly in California, an increase 

 entirely out of proportion to the development of the West 

 in general lines of agriculture, and so great that the Rocky 

 Mountain and Pacific Coast States are shown by the last 

 census, which, however, covered a favorable honey year in 

 the West and a poor one in the Central and Southern States, 

 to have produced substantially one-third of the total honey 

 crop of the United States, California alone producing almost 

 one-fifth. 



In the greatest of the honey years recorded by the census, 

 1889, the figures for some States are quite astonishing from 

 the standards of other years. New York producing over 

 4,000,000, Illinois and Missouri between 4,000,000 and 

 5,000,000, and Iowa almost 7,000,000 pounds, this being 

 for New York a third more, for Illinois and Missouri in 

 excess of a half more, and for Iowa more than double, the 

 crop of any other year reported. 



36993"— 18— Bull. 685 4 



