I just love average production quotes. In our valley in South Africa there
were 15 farms producing export table grapes. They got ripe in November
bringing a huge premium, and everyone would go on and on about
their "average production". For some people this would be the total number
of boxes of grapes sold divided by the total number of acres that were in
prodution. For others, it was the total number of boxes divided by their
best 10 grape vines...

So when I see rounded numbers like 235 pounds, to me that is a red flag.
When you think about all the people who produced 25 to 50 pounds, there
must have been a whole lots of folks who regularly got 500 pounds per
hive, but I'll want to see detailed stats before I'll do anything but
write off the 235 figure. It is well known that 94.7 percent of statistics
are just made up. :-)

As to foraging areas, I would say on the whole there probably isn't much
difference between now and 100 years ago. In my area of California we now
have eucalyptus which people who are familiar with this area can attest,
can give you a shallow super every two weeks in Jan. and Feb. where we
didn't have any before. And the sage crop, while diminished by
developement, was never even used to anywhere near full capacity. Even now
there are thousands of acres of sage pasture without a hive in site. And
due to the irrigation of gardens and all the old trees and hedges, the
hive I keep in my backyard in town produces so much more than the hives I
have in "wilderness" that you can't compare them at all. Sure, you have to
subtract parking lots, big cities, etc.. but when you factor in greater
access to forage due to roads and things like that, I wouldn't be suprised
if total accessable forage hasn't increased.

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