1910 



GLEANrNOS IN BEE CULTURE 



671 



Our Homes 



By A. I. Root 



And Adam called his wife's name Eve because 

 she was the mother of all living.— Gen. 3 :20. 



Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply 

 thy sorrow and thy conception: in sorrow thou 

 Shalt bring forth children.— Gen. 3 : 16. 



Favor is deceitful, and beauty is vain: but a wo- 

 man that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised.— 

 PROV. 31 : 30. 



In the introduction to the ABC book, 

 brief mention is made of my paying $20.00 

 to L. L. Ijangstroth for a queen. Below is 

 something further in regard to that trans- 

 action. I copy it from the AmeriGan Bee 

 Journal for May, 1867: 



Well, as I had got the Italian-queen fever I was 

 bound to have one: S20 was a big price to pay for a 

 single bee. as my friends expressed it. but I thought 

 that in bees as in other things the best was gener- 

 ally the cheapest and surest: and so away goes the 

 $20 greenback with an anxiety and impatience for 

 the result not equaled by any other transaction 

 where several hundred were at stake. 



The days at length passed as days always do. I be- 

 lieve, and a reply came, and. shortly after, the tiny 

 movable-frame hive, and the beautiful little stran- 

 gers as kind and gentle as kittens. 



At first, great preparations were made in a room 

 on purpose to open the little hive before a window, 

 as we supposed of course they would fly, but not a 

 bee moved off from the combs: they were taken 

 out and looked at, handled, caressed, and even 

 breathed upon, without stirring a wing, and the re- 

 tiring modest little queen, with her beautiful ta- 

 pering form, was already worth the 820 just to look 

 at. 



Great was the fear that that Important ceremony 

 of Introductfon to the black natives might miscar- 

 ry in some way, and over and over again were the 

 instructions read before commencing. 



After six hours the Italian queen was placed in a 

 cage on the frames, and, at the proper time, as the 

 cage was opened, my heart stood still, and so did 

 the bees: and as she silently disappeared between 

 the combs I drew a long breath of relief, for I knew 

 that my highly esteemed 820 queen was safe. 



I think I have before remarked that nev- 

 er in my hfe did I make an investment that 

 brought me more satisfaction and profit 

 than that $20.00 I paid for my first queen. 

 There was much sport and merriment here 

 in Medina when it was noised all over town 

 that I had paid 820.00 for just one little 

 "bug." But that one little bug became 

 the mustard seed that started an industry 

 now known all over the whole wide world. 

 Please excuse me if I remark right here that 

 the goods our company sent to bee-keepers 

 during the past season amounted to over 

 half a million dollars; and many of them 

 have gone to the "uttermost parts of the 

 earth." Now, why was it that that specu- 

 lation was a wise one? How did it come 

 that I could afford to pay out of my scanty 

 means at that time such a sum of money 

 for just one little insect? How does it come 

 that our rural friends can many times af- 

 ford to pay big prices for choice domestic 

 animals? Well, the secret of the whole 

 business I have just been talking about is 

 that this queen was a ??!0</ier bee. If you 

 turn back to that old American Bee Jour- 



nal you will notice that, after many narrow 

 escapes, I succeeded in preserving her alive 

 through the winter, and in the spring I pro- 

 ceeded at once with boyish enthusiasm to 

 raise queens enough to make quite an api- 

 ary. There was no Italian blood at that 

 time in this vicinity. In fact, very few It- 

 alians, comparatively, were to be found in 

 Ohio, nor in the United States, for that 

 matter. As the result of my enthusiasm 

 (which kept up day and night, winter and 

 summer, for many a year) the progeny of 

 that S20.00 queen was scattered far and 

 wide. When I started out amid much op- 

 position to raise dollar queens, and advised 

 others to go into the business, no one can 

 tell how many tons of honey were the direct 

 result of that one purchase. 



One reason why so much value centers in 

 a queen is that, when you go into bee-keep- 

 ing, you do not need to buy a pair or a trio, 

 as you do with poultry. You simply pur- 

 chase a mother bee — one that has already 

 met a drone, and you could take her out on 

 an island and people it with her progeny. 



Well, this Home paper is not going to be 

 about bees nor jjoultry. ISIy subject is the 

 mothers of the human family — perhaps the 

 mothers of American sons and daughters 

 particularly. Are we, as a people, look- 

 ing after the welfare of the mothers, on 

 whom so much dei)ends? Our first text 

 tells us that Eve was so named because she 

 was the "mother" of all living (like the 

 queen bee I have been talking to you about) 

 and perhaps we may stop and consider 

 right here the terrible calamity that fell on 

 all humanity from that time up to the pres- 

 ent, because this mother of the human race 

 was indiscreet, to put it mildly, in listening 

 to the voice of the serpent. May the Lord 

 be praised that, through the gospel of Jesus 

 Christ and his teachings here on earth, all 

 motherhood has been elevated and raised 

 up since that first terrible fall. But the ser- 

 pent is still among us or we should not have 

 the divorces that threaten just now to be 

 worse — yes, a thousand times worse — than 

 smallpox or cholera, because mothers are 

 still not only listening but permitting them- 

 selves to hQ beguiled by the serpent. 



Forty-five years ago I took pains and 

 spent considerable money to protect that 

 one precious queen during the winter. A 

 few days ago a gray-haired mother — a moth- 

 er in Israel, I am glad to say — told me of an 

 old silver watch that her husband, who is 

 now dead and gone, bought of me for S4.8.00. 

 The watch is still doing good service, one of 

 the first American watches. But why talk 

 about watches in connection with mothers? 

 Well, she said further, "Mr. Root, my hus- 

 band paid you for the watch with eight col- 

 onies of bees; and you purchased those 

 eight colonies of bees so as to be sure to 

 winter over that ?20.00 queen." 



From the above you will not only see thaf 

 I paid $20.00 for the queen, but when the 

 colony where I placed her had almost " pe- 

 tered out" as the result of experiments I in- 

 vested S40.00 more in bees to preserve and 



