36 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Jan, 1 



OUR 

 HOK/IES; 



BY A. I. R O OT. 



What hath God wrought ?-NuM. 23 : 23. 



Dear friends, I have a wonderful story to 

 tell you— a story that, in some respects, out- 

 rivals the Arabian Nights fables— a story, 

 too, with a moral that I think many of the 

 younger ones need, and perhaps some of the 

 older ones too if they will heed it. God in 

 his great mercy has permitted me to be, at 

 least somewhat, instrumental in ushering 

 in and introducing to the great wide world 

 an invention that may outrank the electric 

 cars, the automobiles, and all other methods 

 of travel, and one which may fairly take a 

 place beside the telephone and wireless teleg- 

 raphy. Am I claiming a good deal ? Well, 

 I will tell my story, and you shall be the 

 judge. In order to make the story a helpful 

 one I may stop and turn aside a good many 

 times to point a moral. 



In our issue for Sept. 1 I told you of two 

 young men, two farmer's boys, who love 

 machinery, down in the central part of Ohio. 

 I am now going to tell you something of two 

 other boys, a minister's boys, who love 

 machinery, and who are interested in the 

 modern developments of science and art. 

 Their names are Orville and Wilbur Wright, 

 of Dayton, Ohio. I made mention of them 

 and their work on page 241 of our issue for 

 March 1 last. You may remember it. These 

 two, perhaps by accident, or may be as a 

 matter of taste, began studying the flights 

 of birds and insects. From this they turned 

 their attention to what has been done in the 

 way of enabling men to fly. They not only 

 studied nature, but they procured the best 

 books, and I think I may say all the papers, 

 the world contains on this subject. When 

 I first became acquainted with them, and 

 expressed a wish to read up all there was on 

 the subject, they showed me a library that 

 astonished me ; and I soon found they were 

 thoroughly versed, not only in regard to our 

 present knowledge, but evfery thing that had 

 been done in the past. These boys (they 

 are men now), instead of spending their 

 summer vacation with crowds, and with 

 such crowds as are often questionable, as so 

 many do, went away by themselves to a 

 desert place by the seacoast. You and I 

 have in years past found enjoyment and 

 health in sliding down hill on the snow ; but 

 these boys went off to that sandy waste on 

 the Atlantic coast to slide down hill too ; but 

 instead of sliding on snow and ice they slid 

 on air. With a gliding machine made of 

 sticks and cloth they learned to glide and 

 soar from the top of a hill to the bottom ; 

 and by making not only hundreds but more 

 than a thousand experiments, they became 

 so proficient in guiding these gliding ma- 

 chines that they could sail like a bird, and 

 control its movements up and down as well 

 as sidewise. Now, this was not altogether 



for fun or boys' play.* They had a purpose 

 in view. I want to stop right here to draw 

 one of my morals. If I allude to myself 

 somewhat, please do not think I do it 

 because I wish to boast. Some of you have 

 read or heard me tell of the time when my 

 attention was first called to bees. Almost 

 the first thing I did was to go to the book- 

 stores and see what books were to be found on 

 the subject. I studied these books day and 

 night, and read them over and over again. 

 Then I procured the books and bee-journals 

 from the old world; and when the language 

 was something I could not manage I hired 

 an interpreter to translate for me until I 

 knew pretty nearly what the book contained. 

 In less than one year I was in touch with 

 the progressive bee-keepers of the world ; 

 and the American Bee Journal, that had 

 been dropped for lack of support, was start- 

 ed up again. I mention this to show you 

 that my success in bee culture, from the 

 very first, was not luck or chance. It was 

 the result of untiring energy and work. Now 

 let me draw a contrast. During the years 

 that are past, quite a number of men have 

 come to me with their patented hives. A 

 good many of these men had never seen a 

 bee-journal. Some of them who had paid 

 out their hard earnings to the Patent Office 

 had almost never seen a book on bee culture, 

 and they were not sure, from actual expe- 

 rience, of the existence of the queen-bee. 

 We have inventors at the present time who 

 are giving their lives and money to the four 

 winds in the same poor foolish way. If you 

 wish to make a success of any thing, or in 

 any line among the many lines that lie 

 before us in this great world of ours, find 

 out what the great and good men have done 

 in this special line before you. 



Well, these two men spent several sum- 

 mers in that wild place, secure from intru- 

 sion, with their gliding machine. When 

 they became experts they brought in, as they 

 had planned to do, a gasoline-engine to fur- 

 nish power, and made a little success with 

 their apparatus before winter set. As soon 

 as the weather would permit, their experi- 

 ments were resumed the past season. You 

 may have seen something in regard to it in 

 the papers ; but as their purpose has been 

 from the beginning to the end to avoid pub- 

 licity, the great outside world has had but 

 very little opportunity of knowing what is 

 going on. The conditions were so different 

 after applying power that it seemed at first, 

 to a great extent, as if they would have to 

 learn the trade of guiding their little ship 

 all over again. At first they went only a 

 few hundred feet ; and as the opportunity 

 for practice in guiding and controlling it was 

 only a few seconds at a time, their progress 



* When I suggested that, even though sliding down 

 hill on the air was very nice, it must have been quite a 

 task to carry the machine bacic to the top of the hill 

 every tinje, the reply was something like this: "Oh! 

 no, Mr. Root— no task at all. Just remember that we 

 always sail against the wind; and by a little shifting of 

 the position, the wind does the greater part of the work 

 in carrying it back." It just blows it back (whenever 

 the wind is strong enough) up hill to the starting-point. 



