ILLIXOIS STATE BEE-KEEPERS' ASSOCIATIOX. 155 



there is not the serious problem that we might consider it to be. In 

 fact, most of the bees on the upper peninsular- — and I am not saying 

 there is not very many up there — are wintered out doors in snow- 

 walled hives without further protection. That is the ordinary means 

 of wintering. Now, the conditions are these: Early in the fall — I 

 haven't had a report on it this winter yet — but ordinarily early in 

 the fall the snows come, and they don't melt; usually when it starts 

 snowing it stays. It starts snowing about the time the ground begins 

 to freeze, and the result is that there is built up a gradual blanket of 

 snow until it may be six oV eight feet deep, and the hives are down under 

 that snow. Now the ground soon thaws after the snow falls, the 

 ground that is frozen thaws out, and you see you have naturally an 

 excellent winter repository for the bees, and utider those conditions 

 the bees winter very satisfactorily. But of course that beautiful dream 

 must be shattered by the fact that every once in a while they have a 

 winter up there when they don't have the snow, and then it is woe to 

 the colonies that are outside in single- walled hives, they are just simply 

 wiped off the map, that is all there is to it, just simply blotted out, 

 because it is not unusual for the mercury to fall to 35 or 40 degrees 

 below zero. In fact, Humboldt, a small town on the Duluth, South 

 Shore and Atlantic Railroad in Marquette County, is frequently pointed 

 to as the coldest spot in the eastern United States, and whenever there 

 comes a real cold snap I usually look on the weather report to see how 

 it stood at Humboldt, and that is on the upper peninsular. 



Thus far I only know of two cellars on the upper peninsular for 

 wintering. Cellar wintering in my estimation on the upper peninsular 

 involves the same identical principle as cellar wintering in southern 

 Illinois, as far as that is concerned. That is, a good cellar in one place 

 I think is a good cellar in the other. They can be wintered successfully 

 in a cellar. I was in a couple of apiaries where tenement packing cases 

 are used, both the two colony packing case and the four colony packing 

 case, and they were giving satsifaction. In some ways I feel that I 

 would want to winter bees in the tenement packing cases on the 

 upper peninsular rather than any other way, but of course that is a 

 matter of choice. 



I do want to say this tojday in closing. In my ■estimation clover 

 land, as the upper peninsular/is known, is to-day the greatest untouched 

 resource of honey in AmeHea that I know of. I don't know how great 

 that one is in southern California that they have been investigating 

 in the United States Forest Preserve, but there are thousands of loca- 

 tions in upper Michigan untouched. I went through counties where I 

 could hardly find a colony of bees, and I do not see why bee-keeping 

 would not be a success there, when in other counties, under what 

 seemed to me identical conditions, bee-keeping was being carried on 

 with success. And across the Soo, over on the Canadian side, I found 

 that there were successful bee-keepers over there, and I know that over 

 in Canada, even on the north side of Lake Superior, that bee-keeping 

 is being carried on with more or less success. 



The greatest drawback to the upper peninsular that I know of, and 

 in some ways it has its advantages, is that great cold body of water, 

 Lake Superior. And still, at Marquette, there on the south shore of 



