January, 1918 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



EDITORIAL ANNOUNCEMENT 



13 



A Boiled-down Summaty of the Valuable Points in my Life and in Gleanings 

 in Bee Culture for the Past Fifty Years 



PerhaiJS I should explain to our readers 

 that Huber has been hard at work with me 

 in making the material for a book that will 

 contain a review of my life and the prob- 

 lems in bee culture that have been thrashed 

 out during the past 50 years or more; for 

 we have included the writings of " Nov- 

 ice, " as I was called at that early day, taken 

 from the American Bee Journal where they 

 were published several years before Glean- 

 ings was started. 



Between 1873 and 1876 I made many ex- 

 periments in regard to feeding.' I even went 

 so far as to feed a whole barrel of sugar to 

 a colony — of course late in the fall after 

 honey had ceased to come in. I also, at the 

 same time, made experiments in chaff pack- 

 ing, and brought out what I called my chaff 

 hive. It was during these early days, too, 

 that I was making experiments with the 

 first all-metal honey-extractors and the 

 " one-pound" sections. 



Below is a sample of some of the conclu- 

 sions that T came to at that early date. I 

 give place to it here to show how my whole 



mind was focused on the bees. You see that 

 even then I was advocating the let-alone 

 plan. 



" Of all the blunders in bee culture, I 

 feel that there are few greater than fussing 

 to get the honey out of combs where it is 

 nicely sealed up, and then fussing still more 

 to get it back again in the same combs. I 

 would even give up feeding whenever possi- 

 ble. Why, just think of it! the best colony 

 in my apiary in the spring of 1876 had not 

 had one minute 's time expended on it for 

 the previous six months. At that rate one 

 person could take care of a thousand hives 

 until the time for surplus honey comes." — 

 Gleanings, p. 130, 1876. 



At the present time I cannot tell you just 

 when the publication of this story of my life 

 and work will be begun. It will be printed 

 serially in Gleanings first and then brought 

 out in book form. You may rest assured, 

 however, that as a book it will be offered 

 very low (considering the amount of valua- 

 ble matter) to the readers of Gleanings. 



A. I. ROOT. 



A. I. Root reading- the last pages of his autobiograpUv 



November, 1917. 



