For the sake of comparison, note the increase of milk production per cow in the past hundred years. Has honey production per colony increased during that time?

> Dairy cow numbers began this century at about 17 million, peaked in 1944 at 25.6 million and today are at about 9.1 million. Annual production per cow began this century at just over 3,000 lbs, increased to 5,314 lbs in 1950 and today is above 17,000 lbs.  -- Carl E. Coppock, Coppock Nutritional Services, San Antonio, TX

* * *

> The State of New York stood first in the quantity of honey produced; and the next States in their order were Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Louisiana. Canada produced more honey than Ohio. Dakota reported an average of 159 pounds per colony. New York produced more than 1,000.000 pounds of comb-honey and about 2,000,000 of extracted honey. -- ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA. 1892. 

> National honey production in 2010 was 176 million pounds, up 20 percent from 2009. There were 2.687 million honey producing colonies in the U.S., up 7 percent from last year. The average yield increased 12 percent, to 65.5 pounds per colony. --USDA 

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html

Guidelines for posting to BEE-L can be found at:
http://honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm