March, 1921 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



171 



in their native home. Tlie inclosed clip- 

 ping from the Cleveland Plain Dealer, in 

 view of this, should be interesting: 



BEES TO AID SUGAR LACK. 



Italy Gives Rail Employes Unique .Job. 



ROME. — Italy is devising means to alleviate the 

 beet sugar shortage. She has been urged to put 

 more bees at work producing honey. 



Italy in 1917 had only 67,000 miles of railways, 

 and at regular intervals along the lines are little 

 houses where the railway employes, signalmen, track 

 walkers, and repairmen live. The manager of the 

 National Institute for Agrarian Assistance recently 

 recommended that they each be given a hive of 

 bees. 



In conformity with the suggestion the e.xperiment 

 is to be begun at once on the lines in the province 

 of Rome; and, if successful, it will be extended to 

 all the railways of Italy. 



The above, if carried out, will certainly 

 result in a tremendous boost to bee culture 

 in Italy. If we knew how many miles 

 apart these stations were to be, we could 

 tell a little better how many bees it would 

 take to cover the whole 67,000 miles. I 

 find we have now only eight subscribers in 

 Italy. Can not one or more of these eight 

 subscribers tell us a little more about it? 

 And, by the way, can not the suggestion be 

 carried out, more or less, here, in our own 

 country? If each one of our thousand 

 railway stations, say in country places 

 and the little towns, were once started in 

 bee culture, it might result in saving many 

 tons of nature's sweets. 



A. I. ROOT AS HIS DAUGHTER SEES 

 HIM. 



The Farm Journal for January, on its 

 page of "Workers and Work," published an 

 article "unbeknownst" to Mr. A. I. Eoot, 

 under these headlines: "One of the Farm 

 Journal's Oldest Friends, Amos I. Root, the 

 Bee Man." The author was his daughter, 

 Mrs. Constance Eoot Boyden — in the old 

 days her father's "Blue Eyes." The editor 

 of Gleanings makes bold to publish this 

 well-done sketch of the father without con- 

 sulting either tjie subject or the author of 

 it. Here it is: 



"My father might be described as a man 

 who has never been without a hobby. Per- 

 haps this explains why at eighty years of 

 age ho is mentally keen and has the en- 

 thusiasm and zest for life of a boy, altho 

 always he has been handicapped by a frail 

 constitution which necessitated his husband- 

 ing his health. 



' ' When only sixteen his hobby was elec- 

 tricity, and he even went about giving lec- 

 tures on what was then a little understood 

 sidiject. Later when he had a growing busi- 



ness as manufacturing jeweler, he happened 

 to notice a swarm of bees going overhead, 

 and paid a workman a small sum to capture 

 them for him. 



' ' That little incident altered the course of 

 his whole life, and shaped the lives of all 

 his descendants to the third generation. 

 From that time on bees became his hobby, 

 and lie gave all his spare time to their 

 study. Since the hooks of that period did 

 not give him all the information he wished, 

 he studied his jicts at first hand to such 

 purpose that he afterward wrote the well- 

 known "A B C of Bee Culture." 



"But electricity and bees were by no 

 means his only hobbies. He was one of 

 the first keenly interested in aviation, being 

 a confidant and friend of the Wright Broth- 

 ers when they were making their first secret 

 attempts at flying. 



"And he has had a lifelong love for out- 

 of-door work and "seeing things grow," 

 both in his garden and chicken yard. You 

 will notice I use the expression "out-of- 

 door work. ' ' If father ever deliberately 

 started out to play, I never knew it. He 

 would probably not know a golf stick from 

 a tennis racquet, nor has he any first-hand 

 acquaintance with a fish-pole or gun. And 

 yet, I am not sure but that he has taken 

 more recreation than any other man I know. 

 You see much of his work is recreation 

 because he works along the lines of his hob- 

 bies. He can extract more pleasure from a 

 combination of hoe, garden soil, and grow- 

 ing crops than other men can find on ideal 

 links with the most expensive golf sticks. 



' ' His latest hobby is to generate electric- 

 ity by wind power. By windmills, at his 

 little Florida home, he charges storage bat- 

 teries and thus runs a little electric runa- 

 bout and lights his house. He likes to mysti- 

 fy small boys by telling them his automo- 

 bile runs by wind. 



' ' Although father 's life-work has seemed 

 guided by his hobbies, there is a dominating 

 principle over all, and that is, and always 

 has been, his great desire to serve human- 

 ity. 



"Here is a rather strange fact about fa- 

 ther; he has never been employed by any 

 other man, not even for one day. 



' ' Now, at eighty years age, father is a 

 busy, happy optimist." 



Mr. A. I. Root. 



I liave just read your Home Department in 

 August Gleanings, and I want to let you know how- 

 much I value it. As I am a beekeeper I read Glean- 

 ings from the front cover to the back, but your de- 

 partmemt comes first with me. I consider your de- 

 partment worth more than Gleanings cost. Let them 

 that want to criticise, do so; but remember that 

 you are doing God's work, and that there are far 

 nioif tli.it •■ipprcciate it then there arei that criticise. 

 EUGENE HOLLOWAY. 

 Marietta, Okla., Aug. 3, 1920. 



