Islands Industry

Beekeeping As An Islands Industry Part I—General

By F. J. Morgan

HONEY was man’s chief source of sweetening for thousands of years.

Bees-wax provided the first candles.

Even in these synthetic days, no real sub stitute has been found for either of these products.

Honey has been termed the perfect food. Chemically, it has a completely balanced vitamin content, and it can be produced almost anywhere in the world, so long as one has bees, and does not live in a treeless desert. From the food angle alone, the prospect of keeping one or two hives should be considered by readers living ip Pacific Islands, where the addi tion to the menu of one’s own honey, still in the comb, would be a welcome break from the endless diet of tinned preserves.

Climate is not a prohibiting factor.

There are commercial apiaries in North Queensland and many parts of the Pacific.

The Hawaiian Islands export more than 1,500,000 pounds weight of honey annually to USA.

Beekeeping is not difficult to learn, and there are probably more people keeping one or two hives, as a hobby, than there are commercial apiarists. It is difficult to state definitely how much honey or wax one hive will produce in a season—so many local factors enter into it. The New Zealand Government Department of Agriculture’s Bulletin No. 128, says on page 4: “As an estimate, from a well conducted apiary, in a good district, the nett profits per colony of bees should reach from 25/- to 35/- per annum, through a number of successive seasons,

and this estimate is well within the mark”.

Bees can be kept for either honey or wax. In advanced agricultural and in dustrial countries, bees are kept for honey, but it is an economic fact that such countries become bees-wax importers.

WHEN bees are kept in modern hives, the combs, when filled with honey, are taken from the hives, and the honey either drained or spun out in a centrifugal machine called a honey ex tractor. The combs, when emptied of honey in this way, are replaced in the hive for refilling, and may be used several times.

If the colony is very strong in num bers, and there is plenty of honey for the bees to gather, they may fill all the combs in an ordinary hive very quickly, and still have an abundance; in which case the bee-keeper adds another section on top of the hive, making sure that it is fitted with frames containing wax-comb foundation, to give the bees a start. TTie use of comb-foundation, or of old combs from which honey has been extracted, saves a bee wasting time producing wax, and saves honey too, since a bee engaged in building honey-comb, consumes honey instead of gathering it.

BEES- WAX is a product of the bee it self. A bee, making wax-cells for honey storage or for the queen to lay eggs in, as the case may be, produces the wax in the form of small leaves, from wax glands in its abdomen.

It is generally held that bees consume about 7 lb. of honey to produce 1 lb. of wax. This may be about right, but ex periments at the Schleswig - Holstein State Agricultural College, in 1932, pro duced complete combs of wax, on standard frames, through the artificial feeding of 20 lb. of sugar, dissolved in water, to naked swarms of bees in empty hives.

Each colony, also, from the same feeding,

built up sufficient store of honey for the winter.

This method of feeding may have to be resorted to at some time in almost any apiary, if the bee-keeper finds that the bees cannot gather sufficient nectar from the local foliage to build up a good store of honey. By placing molasses, or sugar and-water syrup, in a container, at the entrance of the hive, without blocking the traffic, the bees can be kept alive and may direct their energies to comb building.

When directing the bees’ energies to wax production, they must be allowed to store sufficient honey for food to keep them alive, while they are building and

also during the off season. The bees, not suspecting the plot against them, in stinctively commence building up cells on the wax-foundation in the hive, to hold the honey they intend to gather. The bee-keeper watches the work closely and, before the cells are filled and capped, he removes the almost completed comb, cuts off the walls of the cells which the bees have built up, and replaces the wax foun dation sheet in the hive for further building.

IN Pacific Islands from which there are no direct shipping services to the large honey-importing markets of Great Britain and USA, bee-keeping for wax-production can be recommended as most profitable, secure in the knowledge that a large and growing market for the product can be found in Australia. Until recent times, it was not considered a pro fitable enterprise to keep bees for wax instead of honey production. Bee-keepers

m Australia were unanimous in the opinion that to make wax production pay, a price of at least 2, - per pound was needed for the wax. The present rates in Australia are between 2/- and 2/4 per lb.

Commonwealth consumption of beeswax is far in excess of local production and the demand is keeping pace with the rapid expansion of secondary industries.

Next issue: Part ll.—Honey Production and How a Colony is Worked.

Rev. F. W. Noack, Lutheran missionary in New Guinea, has been relieving his brother, Rev. H. Noack, in Walpeup parish, Victoria.

Mr. Chung Ah Sam, an old respected member of the Chinese community in Fiji, died in Suva last month at the age of 82. He was the first Chinese market gardener in Fiji, having arrived in the Colony over 50 years ago.