BEE MANUAL. 19 
afew months ago, state that the total output of California 
honey, comb and extracted, for 1884, aggregated nearly the 
enormous total of 9,000,000 Ibs. It has no parallel in any part 
of the world. These appear to be enormous results, and yet 
the apiarists of America still speak and act as men convinced 
tbat their industry is scarcely out of its infancy as yet, and who 
see no prospect of a sudden or early check to the progressive 
increase either of production or consumption. 
The use of manufactured sugar has now for many generations 
almost entirely supplanted that of honey, which could not be, 
under the old system, produced in sufficient quantities or at a 
sufficiently low cost to compete with the new sweet. But sugar, 
although so nearly the same in chemical constitution, is not 
honey, and never can take the place of that delicious product 
as an agreeable and wholesome addition to the food of man. 
Modern apiculture, which renders possible an enormously in- 
creased production of honey at a greatly reduced cost, cannot 
fail to lead to its general use again, not of course to the ex- 
clusion of sugar, but upon a scale which would have been quite 
impossible in former times. 
PROFITS OF BEE-KEEPING. 
This is a question with reference to which it is necessary to 
uard against false or exaggerated views. It must be recollected 
that all industries require the combination in certain propor- 
tions of three elements—capital, labour, and skill. Some 
afford aready and safe investment for the first ; others require 
an immense quantity of the second; and others again are 
chiefly dependent upon the exercise of the third. The honey 
industry especially may be reckoned of the latter sort. An 
apiary cannot, it is true, be established without a certain 
expenditure of capital, nor worked without some labour ;_ but 
both these factors are small as compared with the value of the 
personal care and attention of the skilled apiarist, upon which 
the question of profit or Joss mainly depends, and the profits 
of a successful apiary are rarely indeed more than sufficient to 
fairly remunerate the time and skill so applied. Bee-keeping 
is therefore not to be looked upon as a profitable investment for 
large capital, or as a large employer of labour, but as a fair 
field, and certainly a fairly remunerative one, for the industry, 
