854 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



A part of the vinegar-plant and home of W. W. Gary & Son, Lyonsville, Mass. 



Gary began keeping bees. By a very for- 

 tunate combination of circumstances Mr. 

 Langstroth, then principal of a ladies' acad- 

 emy at Greenfield, Mass., got in touch with 

 Mr. Gary at Golerain. Langstroth was de- 

 veloping his hive, and needed a practical 

 man like Gary to test it. While in West 

 Philadelphia Langstroth had been studying 

 Huber, and he had learned much from that 

 wonderful naturalist, who, although he had 

 no eyes, saw far more of the mysteries of 

 the hive than any who had preceded him. 

 Although he felt much indebted to this 

 prince of investigators, he saw that the 

 Huber leaf hive was too crude to yield 

 practical results. But crude as the hive 

 was, Huber was able to separate fact from 

 fiction. These he later gave out in a series 

 of remarkable letters to his friend Gharles 

 Bonnet. This series, for accuracy of obser- 

 vation and a general fund of information 

 regarding the habits of bees, has never been 

 surpassed. Indeed, it may be said that 

 Huber furnished the fundamentals of mod- 

 ern scientific bee cultui'e ; but it remained 

 for Langstroth to develop a hive and sys- 

 tem that would place beekeeping on a prac- 

 tical and commercial basis. How natural, 

 then, that he should seek out a man like 

 Gary ! It seems that various models of his 

 hive were made in the Gary workshop. 

 These hives were then j^laeed in Mr. Gary's 

 apiaiy to be tested out. 



If we could do the paradoxical thing of 

 reading between the lines of unwritten his- 

 tory, we should probably find that W. W. 

 Gary was the mechanic who furnished Mr. 

 Langstroth not only skill but a shop in 

 which to perfect that wonderful hive that 



made it possible to remove any one comb 

 without interfering with any of the others, 

 and without the necessity of slicing any 

 comb from the inside of the hive itself. 



At all events, it Avas after Langstroth left 

 the Gary workshop that he patented his hive 

 and his book. This was published in 1853, 

 a reprint of which will soon be ready for 

 the public. How much of value Mr. Gary 

 himself contributed to the success of the 

 invention Ave do not know and never shall. 

 When we visited Earl M. Nichols, a son-in- 

 law of H. F. Gary, this very workshop was 

 still in existence, and at the time of our visit 

 it was standing without alteration as in the 

 days when Langstroth graced it with his 

 presence. Unfortunately we had only a 

 small kodak with us. Eagerly we pressed 

 the button, and here it is. The building, we 

 understand, has since been removed to make 

 room for a building of greater capacity for 

 the growing business of W. W. Gary & Son 

 and the son-in-law. Earl M. Nichols. 



As has been done many times before, 

 Herbert F., the son of W. W. Gary, took up 

 the work of his father and built up a mag- 

 nificent business in the manufacture of pure 

 cider vinegar, for it seems the senior Gary 

 produced honey and vinegar ; and while the 

 junior Gary continued both lines of busi- 

 ness he appears to have transferred the bee- 

 end to his son-in-law, Mr. Nichols. In the 

 mean time Mr. Gary devoted all his time to 

 the vinegar business until he had a plant 

 that is one of the largest and best in the 

 United States. There may be larger vine- 

 gar-factories, but probably none whose pro- 

 duction is confined entirely to a product 

 from the juice of the apple. 



