POULTRY AND BEES.

Feilding Star, Volume XVIII, Issue 4539, 14 March 1922, Page 4

POULTRY AND BEES.

The statistics concerning poultry and bees in the Dominion which appear in the 1921 census returns reveal satisfactory increases since the previous census in 1916', when the returns were compiled six months later than the usual date, thus reducing the ordinary quinquennial period to four and a-half years.

Fowls increased by 350,000, or 11 per cent.; ducks by 159,000, or 72 per ceut.; and turkeys by 17,000, or 30 per cent. There was a slight increase in the case of geese. Some 145,933 households, or more,than half of the total in the Dominion, were recorded as keeping poultry. Tho habit of keeping poultry is by 110 means confined to country residents, as 61,459 householders in boroughs evidence. Thirty per cent, of those keeping fowls have less than 12 birds oacli.

In regard to bees the statistical report states: The figures showing the number of hives and the honey production arc eminently satisfactory. In 1916 the number of bee-koepers and the honey -'reduced were below the standard of 1911. This may bo almost wholly attributed to tlio operation of the Apiaries Act, which made the keeping of “box” hives illegal, and laid compulsion on bce-keepors to keep their apiaries froo from disease, et,c. Tlio fruition of the improvements aimed at in the Apiaries Act is now evident in tlio enormously increased production. In 1916 the value of the honey exported was onlv £2787; in 1919 it was £59,816, and 'in 1920 £34,122. In 1921 the number of households keeping bees was 8426, while tlio number of hives was 85,861.