COMMERCIAL BEE-KEEPING

Nelson Evening Mail, 17 May 1917, Page 2

COMMERCIAL BEE-KEEPING

A GROWING INDUSTRY. WORK FOR MAIMED -SOLDIERS. I Tlie bee-keeping industry in New Zea- j hind has of late years been placed upon a very solid foundation. The total output of honey for the Dominion in 1907, as officially published. was 450 tons, valued at £20,915, while that for 1915, also officially given, was 1250 tons, valued—at same rates—at close upon £60,000. It is confidently claimed that the £IOO,OOO mark will be reached in a few years, as there is plenty of scope for double the number of commercial bee keepers and an unlimited demand for New Zealand honeyOur best honey is now quoted in England in bulk at £7O per ton, whereas formerly we were very lucky to get £42. Even our tea-tree, or dark, honey, which Ave always reckoned third-grade, owing to the splendid organisation of the Bristol association is bringing £SO per ton, instead of £2B as formerly. Bee-keeping is work that should be very suitable for partially-disabled soldiers . There are many districts where the extension of clover pasture is providing feeding grounds for bees, and it is in such places where some of our returned soldiers might be helped to make a start. To "the eastward and westward of the Main Trunk line, between Te Awanmtu and Te Kuiti. clover pasture is expanding faster than most people imagine, and on the pumice conntry, along the Taupo Timber Company's line from Putaruru, through Lichfield to the Waikato River, clover is being sown vearly by the thousands of acres. Much the same thing is going on in the Rotorua district and about Waiotapu, so that there are literally and figuratively plenty of new fields for new bee-keepers, and, from all that one can see, an assurecf market for all honey that can be raised at profitable prices.