HOKETBEES AJTD HOlfrET PRODUCTTOIT. 25 
TOTAL PRODUCTION OF HONEY, BY DECADES, SINCE 1859. 
According to the census figures the production of honej in 
the year 1859, the first in which this inquiry was made, 
was in round figures 23,000,000 pounds, a very xespectable 
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, 
ahnost 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 ahnost 
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 bemg 
for New York a third more, for lUinois 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 i 
