These stories can also be heard on Sunday mornings around 10 am on WILD 102’s “Look Back in Time” program. Each week’s radio story will be posted here on our website.
Weekly radio stories are researched, compiled, and read by Sheila Winstead, RCHS Board Member.
October 6, 2024
Ninety years ago there was a story about honey production in Roseau County. It appeared in the
September 6, 1934, issue of the Roseau Times-Region with the heading “Big Honey Crop in Cans, Potato
Warehouse is Turned Into Honey Headquarters by Stover.” Here’s the story:
A “sweet job” can be said of the work that F. M Stover, Clyde Blankenship, John Buran and J. A. Jakobsen
are on these days. They are gathering up the honey from the five hundred or more colonies of bees
which Mr. Stover has placed at different points in the county.
Mr. Stover, Mr. Blankenship and Mr. Jakobsen are making trips daily with truck to the different locations
and bringing in the comb honey as manufactured by the bees, while Mr. Buran does the extracting.
Tuesday they brought in 6,600 pounds from the Pinecreek community, and yesterday they came in with
two and a half tons from nearer Roseau. The combs are in one section, and when the honey is extracted,
they are taken back to the hives for another filling. And the bees do it when weather is favorable and
there is nectar to be gathered.
The bee men tell us that a bee must make 32,000 trips to fill a pound of honey. A super will hold about
forty pounds, and under favorable weather this can be filled in two days.
Mr. Stover has his extracting machinery and his supplies in the potato warehouse. The exactor is power
driven. It holds forty-five honey frames, each averaging four pounds of honey. These frames are placed in
the extractor which takes out the honey after it has been decapped. This extraction process takes about
twelve minutes. As the honey is extracted it is pumped into a galvanized tank holding 3,500 pounds of
honey. Here the honey settles and is skimmed. From there it flows to another tank and a similar process
is done, and from there the clear honey goes into the third tank from which it is piped into five-gallon
cans. Two cans are packed in a wood box for shipment.
Some of the honey has been shipped by truck but most of it will go out by freight.
Mr. Stover brought his bees here from the Warren community early in the summer because dry weather
hampered the bees. The production this year will therefore not be as great. This winter he will store the
bees in the basement of the potato warehouse and get them out early next spring. This country is ideal
for honey production.
About three months later, this story appeared in the Times-Region on December 13, 1934:
J. A. Jakobsen and John Buran on Monday loaded a carload of extracted honey for shipment to Sioux
Falls. This is the first carload of extracted honey, or any kind of honey, to be shipped from here in such a
large quantity.
The honey was procured from the apiary of F. M. Stover here during the past season. The honey was
extracted and stored in the potato warehouse until Monday. A truckload of the finished product was
taken to market early in the fall.
The extracted product was stored away in 60-pound cans with two cans to the carton. There were 334 of
these cartons in the Monday shipment. The shipment went to Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
Mr. Stover has stored the bees in the basement of the warehouse and will be back here in the spring,
finding this a good locality for honey production. Mr. and Mrs. Stover came here from Tennessee and are
spending the winter there.
I’ll do a follow-up to this story next Sunday.
Thank you to 
for letting us share our county’s history with your listeners by donating air time, studio time, and production staff every week.