2 BULLETIN 489, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
value of hive products. The State ranks second in value of wax 
produced. The value of bees per colony is reported at $2.04. Atten- 
tion is called to the fact that these figures are not complete, as many of 
the bees in the State are not on farms and many on farms evidently 
were not reported. 
In brief, the survey fully verifies Prof. Franklin Sherman's 1 
statement that " there is perhaps no other industry in the State of 
equal importance, and with equal opportunities for development, 
which is so disorganized, so disconnected, and suffering so badly from 
lack of careful attention and better methods as is the beekeeping busi- 
ness." 
No doubt bees have been in North Carolina for a long time, but 
the business of beekeeping has received so little attention that, except 
in a comparatively few cases, absolutely no advance has been made. 
PRESENT CONDITIONS. 
TYPES OF HIVES. 
Most of the colonies of bees in North Carolina are housed in hol- 
low logs or " gums." Some are kept in upright box hives, " plank " 
or "tall gums," and only a small percentage are in some type of 
movable-frame hive, locally called " patent gums." The eastern and 
western parts of the State have the largest percentage of bees in logs, 
while through the central part the majority of the bees are in movable- 
frame hives. This condition appears to be due partly to the fact that 
the beekeepers are slow to adopt new methods, particularly as in some 
cases movable-frame hives have been tried with poor results, owing to 
lack of knowledge necessary to get good returns. Beekeeping as prac- 
ticed by most of the beekeepers is not profitable, and the present re- 
turns by the old methods are not sufficient to make obvious to them 
the desirability of an expenditure necessary to place the bees in mov- 
able-frame hives. 
Some are using homemade hives with movable frames, and, where 
the hives are made with sufficient accuracy to insure proper spacing 
of the frames, they are giving satisfactory results. White pine of 
fair grade suitable for hives can be had at small cost in the western 
part and a soft cypress (white cypress) in the eastern part of the 
State. A considerable number of factory-made hives have been sent 
into the State, made of yellow pine of poor quality and with the 
frame spacing so inaccurate as to make proper manipulation impos- 
sible. Best results can not be secured with such equipment. 
For the most part the population of North Carolina is scattered 
and transportation is poor; hence there is not the free interchange 
of ideas which occurs in sections where the population is dense. 
1 Sherman, Franklin, jr., 1908. Beekeeping in North Carolina. Bulletin of X. C. Dept. 
of Agr., vol. 29. no 1. 
