1911 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



Our Homes 



By A. I. Root 



Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all 

 the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of 

 the Lord for ever.— Psalm 23 : 6. 



To-day, Dec. 9, is my birthday, and I am 

 really 71 years old; and, may the Lord be 

 praised, I am strong and well, physically, 

 mentally, and (I trust and pray) spiritual- 

 ly also. 



In a little Sunday-school paper called 

 Forward, that is distributed at our church 

 to all the classes, old and young, I found 

 the following little gem of thought: 



Only things to eat and drink and wear are high 

 in price. Happiness is at the same old figure. 



I read it over and laughed, and read it 

 over again, and thanked God that it is in- 

 deed true. We may, if we will, or if we 

 choose, all of us, have "happiness" at the 

 "same old figure." My life has, as a rule, 

 been a happy one. I was happy in child- 

 hood, and 1 am happy (may God be prais- 

 ed again) in my old age. One especial 

 thing that has made my life a happy one 

 is that I was always keenly interested in 

 exploring the wonders of God's creation. 

 Even in early childhood I was full of curi- 

 osity in regard to every thing about me; 

 and when father or mother could answer 

 my eager questioning no further, I set about 

 making the plants and animals tell what 

 they knew. In other words, I put them on 

 the witness-stand, as we are told Prof. Hol- 

 den put corn "on the witness-stand," and 

 made corn answer his questions. Bees were 

 my first great hobby, and for many long 

 years I questioned them indefatigably, both 

 day and night. Of course, the explorer in 

 nature's domains meets with many disap- 

 pointments, and, as a rule, follows many 

 false scents, ofttimes, before he gets on the 

 true trail; but, oh the joy and thrill that one 

 feels when he gets at the truth and reaps 

 his reward! 



To illustrate the above, and to tell you at 

 the same time how I am enjoying my "old- 

 age vacation," as I sometimes term it, I 

 will tell you something about what I am 

 now engaged in. 



I have told you before about my arrange- 

 ment for watering my seven yards of chick- 

 ens, with dropping water, in an overflowing 

 dish in each yard; well, the plan I have been 

 using requires quite a little iDumping every 

 morning, and it was, therefore, quite desir- 

 able to have a running stream; so we sank 

 a well on the highest part of our premises, 

 and found plenty of water down about four 

 feet. As our ground slopes strongly, in 

 only a few rods this water would be on top 

 of the ground ; so we got some cheap second- 

 hand pipe and undertook to siphon the wa- 

 ter out of the well; but although the long 

 arm of the siphon was several inches lower 

 than the water in the well, it didn't work. 



The reason was, a much stronger fall is 

 needed to pull water out of a well, under 

 such circumstances; and the friction in pass- 

 ing through a long iron pipe of small diam- 

 eter (more or less rusty inside, besides) was 

 more than I had calculated. We spent con- 

 siderable time on it before we reluctantly 

 gave it up, and now I must confess to a 

 piece of stupidity on my part that I am 

 ashamed of; but as it well illustrates my 

 point, I will tell you about it. 



During these very experiments mention- 

 ed, we were having trouble with water com- 

 ing up through the cement floor of our in- 

 cubator cellar. My brother had suggested 

 digging a ditch in which to place the pipe 

 from the well to the poultry-yards; but this 

 would be quite an expense, besides littering 

 up the premises; and we should also have to 

 cut through quite a few clumps of palmetto. 

 In trying to drain the cellar I first put in a 

 two-inch cement tile; but the palmetto roots 

 or something else soon rotted the tiles. 

 Perhaps they were made of cement not 

 " rich " enough; at any rate, they soon fail- 

 ed. I then dug them all up and put in four- 

 inch sewer-pipe; but after the heavy rains 

 of last summer, even this sewer-pipe be- 

 came filled up more or less with the soft 

 white quicksand that runs almost like wa- 

 ter in this region. The consequence was, 

 that when I got here the first of November 

 there was several inches of water in the cel- 

 lar; and the "legs" (and especially the 

 "ankles") of my Cyphers incubator indi- 

 cated the water had been almost a foot deep 

 and had stood there for some time. 



By the way, when I commenced making 

 a cellar here in Florida I was told by several 

 that yo'u couldn't have cellars here; and I 

 was just beginning to find out at least one 

 reason why. Now, a damp or wet cement 

 floor for an incubator cellar is just what is 

 wanted; but, of course, \ye do not want wa- 

 ter a foot deep. After pondering over the 

 matter I declared I would put in an iron 

 pipe, so fixed that sand could not get into 

 it. And this is the way I did it: We cut 

 out a small circle in the floor of the cellar, 

 and with a post-auger made a s'mall well 

 about three feet deep. The iron pipe was 

 then turned to go down into this well, near- 

 ly to the bottom. This pipe was then laid 

 under the floor (and, of course, under water) , 

 and then pushed down through the filled- 

 up sewer-pipe, so we had no digging what- 

 ever to do. Thus you see we had a "livmg 

 spring " of pure soft water, and had the cel- 

 lar drained nicely, and about then it occur- 

 red to me that if this pipe was connected 

 with my "waterworks," we had not only 

 killed two birds with one stone, but three, 

 and the last one a "whopper." AVe not 

 only have running water in all our yards, 

 but have an overflowing tub full for four 

 Indian Runner ducks that we brought from 

 Ohio. 



There are several lessons to be learned 

 from the above: First, that w^e can not well 

 appreciate something of value to us until 

 we have labored and experienced disappoint- 



