THE APIARY.

Otago Witness, Issue 3348, 15 May 1918, Page 7

THE APIARY.

By J. A.

VALUE OF AN APIARY. I r.m asked the question: “ If I wore going to buy an apiary of ICO colonics in clean and up-to-date condition, would be a reasonable price to pay tor it?” I suppose this question is prompted by the fact that there is, in at least some parts of the Dominion, no established market value for an apiary. The reason of this may be that there are so few engaged in the industry, and in consequence there is little or no demand. While- those w’ho have no knowledge of beekeeping and take no interest in it cannot be expected to have any idea of apiary values. In dairying it is a not uncommon thing to place the value of a dairy herd at what it will produce in a season. Thus in times when lOd or Is was paid for butter-fat a not uncommon return in an ordinary herd was from £lO to £l2 for the season, and that, influenced, of course, by the law of supply and demand, came very near to the value of the cow. This is approximately true at present, when, owing to war values, £2O is a usual return, and £2O a common value for the cow. If bees were bought on this standard, then an apiary in good order that would give an average of 801 b per colony of honey would bo worth £4 per colony, or for the 100 colonics £4CO. In normal times it would sink to just half of that sum, or perhaps less, if honey goes down to the values of five or six years ago. This method, however, of arriving at values is, to say the least, very crude, and the beekeeper wants something more accurate. Let us put • it this way: The hive for extracting, bought in the flat from the supply dealer, costs 15s; made up and painted it should be worth 17s 6d. Twenty combs (10 for brood-nest and 10 for super) are worth 6d each, or 10s for the lot. This latter value is not a high one, as these 20 combs melted down would _ give 41b of wax, the present value of which is 2s per lb, thus giving a wax value of Bs. An excluder would probably cost 2s 6d. The bees, with queen, in the autumn time are not worth more than 10s; but the honey it will take to winter them, say 301 b, is value at' present 15s. In the spring, when, this honey has been consumed, the bees are then worth 255. The expenditure required to bring the bees forward from one season is absolutely necessary, and cannot bo economised -without loss. Beside the bare cost of the materials, it is only fair to add about 5s per colony for the attention required. If we add these amounts together it will make the Value of a hive of bees £3. There is, however, still another consideration. Where the apiary under offer is in a good district and in good going order there is a goodwill value, and it may well be that in these times when the returns arc so good, and when the building up of an apiary means the loss of a season, that it would pay better to give £4OO for a good 100-colony apiary, strong to give an immediate return, rather than start to build up one. If two beekeepers, both understanding then- work, and starting in September, were to choose, one to buy an apiary as a going • concern in good condition for £4OO, and the other to build up a similar apiary from the best of available materials, I should expect to find that the surplus honey gained by the former would far outbalance the saving made by the other in the establishing of his apiary. In pre-war days and for some time afterwards it seemed as if, while other foods were hardening in price, honey had got into a rut and would always be a lowpriced article. Now, however, though engaging only a moderate amount of outside attention, the bee industry is by far The most profitable of what are regarded as side-line industries, and it may well be •that, with an export trade fully developed, with co-operation amongst the beekeepers, and with the aid of our Apiaries Department that the industry will flourish as never before. SOW SWEET CLOVER RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE. LOTS OF IT, AND KEEP AT IT. Sweet clover will eventually revolutionise the whole bee business. There are millions of acres of land in this country that will grow sweet clover, and that are absolutely fit for nothing else. Why do not the beekeepers utilise some of this land? There are many beekeepers living close to towns where there are hundreds of acres of waste lands in town lots that could be used for sweet clover. There are thousands of beekeepers that live in sections where there is old, poor, worn-out land that the owners would be 'glad to have sow r n in sweet clover. Why not sow it now? I get letters from the seven corners of the United States wanting to know of the honey prospects' in this section—letters from parties that are willing to put up several hundred dollars to try out a now country. I want to give to all of these inquiries this advice: instead of putting this money in the coffers of the railroad companies, put it in sweet clover seed, and build up your own location. I had a call recently from two Michigan beekeepers, looking for how fields. Their own locality yielded more honey than mine. Now add sweet clover to their location and you have a bonanza. I also had a call from a dentist beekeeper. His dental trade paid SOOOdol a year. He wanted to keep 2,00 colonies of bees. His old location gave 401 b per colony. Now add sweet clover, and he will have a location that will give 1001 b per colony. Thousands of beekeepers try to increase their yied of honey by adding some fool contraption to the new, modern, np-’to-datc fixtures now on the market. Let these invest their time and _ spare cash in sweet clover seed. Any white clover location can bo doubled in value from a beekeeper’s viewpoint by adding sweet clover. I moved to this country four years ago. I left pood, average white clover country. I now have a sweet clover location with no white clover to speak of, which yields 751 b per colony. Now if I could have my old white clover, too, I would have a location that would give 1251 b. per colony. This is impossible to obtain hero, so I now see my mistake. The money I put in moving 85 miles to mv present home, if it had been nut in sweet clover seed and sowed or. my old location, would have given mo a location 40 per cent, better than my present one. In my old locality farmers are sowing sweet clover bv the thousands of pounds. Only yesterday I had an inquiry irom one of the most progressive farmers in the country for enough sweet clover seed to sow 150 acres, on land worth 200dol per acre. (There is a moving bee beginning to buzz in my bonnet again.) When I say “ sow sweet clover to make

honey," I moan sow tho railroad right- of way v sow the highways, sow tho byways, sow the vacant lots, sow tbo farmers' fertile fields, sow the barren spots, sow the cliffs. Sow 101 b of yellow and 101 b of white for each colony. Sow one-half of it this spring; then do it again next year. Dig down in your jeans; shell out your greenbacks. A hundred pounds is money wasted —sow it by the thousands. Make your business stand alone; make your business give you a commercial rating; get out of the rut; do not let tho editor of Gleanings make you believe that sweet clover is a slow yielder of honey. He never saw a sweet clover location. Get 200 acres in reach of your hundred colonies; get conditions right; watch 81b, 101 b, and 121 b, day after day, go into your supers; then get busy.—Gleanings.