March 16, 1905. 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



201 



Norinern Micmoan a Bee-KeeDers' Paradise. 



" Bells' ding doog, and choral song, 

 Deter the bee from industry ; 

 But hoot of owl, and ' wolf's long howl ', 

 Incite to moil and steady toil." 



Northern Michigan, the home of the 

 huckleberry and the speckled trout, 

 where the wild deer drinks deep from 

 little sparkling^ lakes with white peb- 

 bly beaches, where forests of magnifi- 

 cent beech and maple stretch away for 

 miles unbroken, where still lingers 

 some of Nature's wildness, here is 

 proven the truthfulness of our opening 

 adage — here is a veritable paradise for 

 the bee-keeper. From Canada to Cali- 

 fornia have we sought for the Eldorado, 

 only to find, as is often the case, that 

 it lies at our very door. 



Four years ago I attended, at Trav- 

 erse City, a meeting of the Michigan 

 State Bee-Keepers' Association, and 

 two things struck me quite forcibly : 

 The uniformly good yields reported, 

 and the wonderful interest shown in 

 discussing the problem of how to have 

 populous colonies early in the season, 

 that the best advantage might be taken 

 of the red raspberry bloom. 



THE WONDERFUL AND UNIFORM YIELDS 

 OF NORTHERN MICHIGAN. 



The next year I attended another 

 meeting of bee-keepers held in that part 

 of the State, only further north, at Bel- 

 laire, Antrim County, and again I was 

 surprised at the uniformly good yields 

 reported, and upon inquiry as to the 

 source, the reply was almost invariably 

 " raspberries ". Occasionally some one 

 would add milkweed, or basswood, or 

 willow-herb. I believe I quizzed the 

 members of that convention more per- 

 sistently than I ever did those of any 

 other convention. If a man that I had 

 cornered got away, I immediately cor- 

 ralled another. The man who occupied 

 the room with me at the hotel, where 

 we stopped, was snoring when I asked 

 my last question. Then I went home 

 with Mr. S. D. Chapman, and stayed 

 a day or two, looked over the ground 

 from which his honey was gathered, 

 and listened to the ups and downs of 

 his apicultural life. Red raspberries 

 and bees have certainly pulled his 

 feet oat of the slough of debt. I be- 

 came thoroughly satisfied that this re- 

 gion was the best place I had yet seen 

 for the production of honey ; but I 

 wanted to see it with my own eyes 

 when the harvest was in full swing, so, 

 July, 1903, with camera and pencil, I 

 started in at Traverse City, and spent 

 nearly two weeks visiting bee-keepers 

 from there along up north until near 

 Charlevoix. 



A BIT OF WILDNESS. 



I did take one little side-trip to which 

 I would like to devote a few words. 

 The grand forests of white pine with 

 which so much of this State was once 

 clothed are now nearly extinct, and 



By W. Z. HUTCHINSON. 



when I heard there was still a small 

 tract in Otsego County, I thought 

 " Here is an opportunity to get photo- 

 graphs of something that in a few 

 years will be difficult to find— forests 

 of pine in their native wildness, lift- 

 ing their beautiful, plume-like tops 150 

 feet towards the heavens ". After 

 leaving the cars I walked five miles 

 along a logging road, lugging my big 

 camera with me, ate with " the hands '" 

 at their shanty (and it was pretty good 

 fare, too), slept with the " boss " in 

 his bunk, and the next morning started 

 through the woods for a small lake, 

 about two miles away, along the banks 

 of which the men told me I would find 

 the finest growth of pine. It had 

 rained during the night, and my trou- 



sers and shoes were wet through long 

 before I reached the lake — but an en- 

 thusiast does not stop for such trifles 

 as that. I loosed the boat fastened to 

 a stake, and floated out over the clear 

 water — so clear that I could see the 

 bottom at a depth that made me feel 

 uncomfortable to think that I was over 

 such deep water. On all sides towered 

 the massive walls of dark green pines. 

 The morning sun was driving away 

 the wreaths of white mist that still 

 lingered in their tops. Beautiful water- 

 lilies, white and yellow, in all their 

 purity and freshness, floated in great 

 profusion on the surface of the water. 

 As I rounded a little point, a red deer, 

 standing knee-deep in water, eating 

 lily-pads, gave one frightened look. 



MILKWEED IN FULL BLOOM 



This picture ^ bows the blossoms about one-fourth natural size. The leaves are a deep, 

 glossy green, wh le the blossoms are a lilac purple, shading off into a magenta red. Later in 

 the season each nuch of blossoms is replaced by a seed-pod nearly as large as a banana, and, 

 attached to the ^^ > ds when ripe is some of the softest, silkiest. Mufliest, whitest, downiest sub- 

 stance that ever frew. Besides furnishing an abundance of honey, the blossoms also secrete 

 a sort of gluey - ; bstance that sometimes catches a bee by the leg — usually the bee pulls away. 



