cultural methods are primitive and bee culture is entirely neglected. In most of the counties of this region less than five per cent, of the land is in farms. Except in the vicinity of the flourishing city of Duluth and along the Iron Range from Hibbing to Ely, it is a thinly settled wilderness with few towns and roads (the main roads being cement), and the traveler may journey a hundred miles without meeting a human being.

Northern Minnesota is a most promising region for beekeeping, as there is no disease, little competition, and alsike clover grows luxuriantly in the cleared lands and secretes nectar most freely. Other surplus honey plants are fireweed, raspberry, white clover, goldenrod, and aster. A few years ago the purple-red fireweed was very abundant, but more recently it has been largely supplanted by shrubby vegetation. The season opens in June and closes in August. The nights are much cooler than the days, and the honey flow is so rapid that a colony may store 200 pounds of honey. The extreme north is uninhabited, and excessively cold in winter, but almost tropical in summer. Good bee pasture has been reported along the Rainy River, which connects the Lake of the Woods with Rainy Lake.

Although there are many excellent locations in this region, there are at present very few beekeepers. The counties are of immense size, and northward are not inhabited. Duluth on Lake Superior offers a ready market for all the honey produced in this portion of the state. In the great county of Beltrami, which includes the Red Lakes and much swampy and sandy soils, there are only a few small towns in its southern portion. The roads connecting the towns are excellent, being either cement or gravel.

The white-clover region occupies the southeastern portion of the state, beginning about 75 miles south of Lake Superior. A generation ago it was covered with a solid hardwood forest of sugar maple, basswood, oak, and elm, which has been largely lumbered and the land converted into productive farms. The underlying rocks are limestones and the dark silty soils are rich in lime. In this, the most populous and productive section of the state, are located the great cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis. The area of the counties in this region is very much smaller than in the northern part of the state, and does not exceed half a million acres each.

Most of the surplus honey comes from white and sweet clover, and from basswood, a complete failure of which in Fillmore County is said not to have been known in twenty years. Expert beekeepers may average not far from 100 pounds per colony, and 20 pounds have been stored by a single colony during a favorable day. White clover is much more reliable in this region than in Illinois or Iowa, and during five years one maximum crop, one failure and three fairly good yields may be expected. In 1918 white clover along the Mississippi River was a complete failure, while buckwheat yielded better than for years. A good basswood flow in some years is obtained in this region, but it is often unreliable. In the spring, brood-rearing is stimulated by willows, maples, and especially by fruit trees and dandelion, which gave a large flow in 1919; in the fall, the bees get their winter stores from goldenrod and aster. The honey flow from clover begins about the middle of June and ends the last of July. As in other localities, the rapidity of the flow is greatly influenced by the weather. Clover honey is very white, or sometimes tinged with yellow if mixed with basswood, and of the finest quality.

The southeastern counties greatly surpass all other parts of the state in bee culture, and are almost overfilled with beekeepers. White and sweet clover are very reliable, and nearly 100 pounds per colony have been obtained. In addition to the honey plants already mentioned, alsike clover, alfalfa, buckwheat, and heartsease are valuable. Nearly all of the counties bordering the eastern side of the Mississippi