DO YOU KNOW THAT

The Sacramento and Vicksburg meetings were ones never to be forgotten?

During the year, 1939, honey flowed through the air from coast to coast in our great country four times?

On January 31 a representative of the American Honey Institute broadcasts from Chicago through the courtesy of the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company?

Through the courtesy of Grapenuts program, sponsored by General Foods, honey was featured on the Kate Smith hour on November 24?

On the Young Doctor Malone program, sponsored by the Post Bran Flakes program on December 8, both comb and extracted honey were mentioned? The woman who gave the broadcast had a wonderful voice and stressed honey.

A representative of the Institute broadcasted on October 29 and 30 from Vicksburg, Mississippi?

We broadcasted from Sacramento, California?

We broadcasted four times on honey over WHA and WLBL at Madison?

Wilson & Company had a most attractive advertisement on honey and Tender-Made ham in 123 papers in the United States on September 28?

This same company mentioned Canadian bacon and honey on September 14?

George Rector in Wilson & Company's column cooperated with the Institute and has included honey in his column at various times?

Swift & Company had a colorful full-page ad in McCall's, American Home, and other magazines, in which honey baked ham slices were illustrated with the recipe?

Eatmore Cranberries had a fullpage ad in which they featured honey baked ham slices with cranberries on the cover of Practical Home Economies, November issue?

Governors in many states issued proclamations designating October 23 to 30 as National Honey Week?

Department of Markets in various states cooperated with American Honey Institute in giving publicity to National Honey Week.

Requests for honey recipes have come from Home Economics instructors in every state in the union and Bulgaria and Porto Rico?

A number of broadcasting stations have asked the Institute to send recipes gratis to all who request leaflets after the broadcast on honey?

A Home Economics Department of one of the largest schools in the country has contributed quantity sized honey recipes to the Institute? These recipes will be available in leaflet form for tea rooms, cafeterias, and hotels.

In the November 25 issue of Bakers' Helper more than a full-page was devoted to Holiday Honey Cakes by W. E. Broeg?

The December issue of Bakers' Review had recipes for Peppernuts, Honey Cake, and Dark Fruit Cake containing honey?

We congratulate Bakers' Helper and Bakers' Review for their contribution to discriminating customers of the Bakers of America?

A few of the leading colleges and universities in our country in 1939 for the first time included honey in their Experimental Cooking Classes?

These schools as well as our industry were benefitted by this experience?

The Institute can now tell of this work to other colleges and try to interest them in similar work?

Space in the journals is limited or we could tell you more?

One hundred years ago, or more exactly, on December 9, 1839, A. I. Root, the founder of this journal and of the Company that bears his name, was born in a little log house a few miles from Medina. Had he lived he would have seen marvelous changes and yet during the period of his active work in beekeeping, 1865 to 1885, he laid the foundation of modern bee culture. No less than Dr. E. F. Phillips of Cornell University, said that he was the evangelist who perhaps more than any one else popularized the then little known business of keeping bees. A. I. Root was the first to make a really good commercial comb foundation. All previous attempts were crude and without side walls.

It was A. I. Root, in 1878, who sent bees in wire cages without combs all over the country, and now close to half a million pounds of bees are so shipped annually from the South to the North to cover winter losses and spring dwindling, and to start new apiaries.

L. L. Langstroth was the Gamaliel at whose feet A. I. Root often sat when he was learning his A B C's of beekeeping. In those days he wrote under the modest nom de plume of Novice, proving that the Langstroth hive and frame were far superior

to all other so-called movable frames. The net result of his early writings made the Langstroth system and the Langstroth frames and dimensions almost universal throughout the United States. Fortunate we are in this country in that we have one hive and frame instead of a dozen different styles of frames and hives as we find in Europe.

Novice in the early days had a style of writing, first, in the old American Bee Journal, and then in Gleanings in Bee Culture, that bubbled over with contageous enthusiasm. He did more to advance bee culture by recounting his mistakes than in his ventures that met with success. These are set forth in the Preface of the 1940 edition of the A B C and X Y Z of Bee Culture.

When A. I. Root passed away in 1923 his life and work was broadcast in newspapers and magazines in this country and Europe. Gleanings office has on file hundreds of these clippings.

There was one write-up that appeared in the Medina Gazette, by the then Editor, W. B. Baldwin. From it the following extract was taken and which is now in bronze on Mr. Root's tombstone:

"Amos I. Root was one of the most remarkable men of the past two generations, remarkable not in one

way, but in many ways. His was a many-sided character, if any man ever had one. Inventor, writer, manufacturer, publisher, thinker, philanthropist, reformer, moralist, agriculturist, Christian. In all of these his character was marked and he was a leader. In most of them he loomed large. Even as an agriculturist, he tilled the soil in a modest way, yet as in everything else he excelled in this. For he not only made two blades of grass grow where only one grew before, but he was gifted with the ability to make things grow where they had never grown before. In many ways his reputation was worldwide."

The following introduction by A. I. Root to the first A B C of Bee Culture will always remain a classic:

"About the year 1865, during the month of August, a swarm of bees passed overhead where we were at work, and my fellow-workman, in

answer to some of my inquiries respecting their habits, asked what I would give for them. I, not dreaming he could by any means call them down, offered him a dollar, and he started after them. To my astonishment, he, in a short time, returned with them, hived in a rough box he had hastily picked up, and at that moment I commenced learning my A B C in bee culture. Before night I had questioned not only the bees but every one I knew who could tell me anything about these strange new acquaintances of mine. Our books and papers were overhauled that evening; but the little that I found only puzzled me the more, and kindled anew the desire to explore and follow out this new hobby of mine; for, dear reader, I have been all my life much given to hobbies and new projects.

"Farmers who had kept bees assured me that they once paid, when

the country was new, but of late years they were no profit, and everybody was abandoning the business. I had some headstrong views in the matter, and in a few days I visited Cleveland, ostensibly on other business, but I had really little interest in anything until I could visit the bookstores and look over the books on bees. I found but two, and I very quickly chose Langstroth. May God reward and forever bless Mr. Langstroth for the kind and pleasant way in which he unfolds to his readers the truths and wonders of creation to be found inside the beehive.

"What a gold mine that book seemed to me as I looked it over on my journey home! Never was romance so enticing-no, not

even

Robinson Crusoe; and, best of all, right at my own home I could live out and verify all the wonderful things told therein. Late as it was, I yet made an observatory hive and raised queens from worker eggs before winter, and wound up by purchasing a queen of Mr. Langstroth for $20.00. I should, in fact, have wound up the whole business, queen and all, most effectually, had it not been for some timely advice toward Christmas, from a plain, practical farmer near by. With his assistance, and by the purchase of some more bees, I brought all safely through the winter. Through Mr. Langstroth I learned of Mr. Wagner, who shortly afterward was induced to recommence the publication of the American Bee Journal, and through this I gave accounts monthly of my blunders and occasional successes.

"In 1867 news came across the ocean from Germany of the honeyextractor; and by the aid of a simple home-made machine I took 1000 pounds of honey from 20 stocks, and increased them to 35. This made quite a sensation, and numbers embarked in the new business; but when I lost all but 11 of the 35 the next winter, many said: "There! I told you how it would turn out.'

"I said nothing, but went to work quietly and increased the 11 to 48 during the one season, not using the extractor at all. The 48 were wintered entirely without loss, and I think it was mainly because I took care and pains with each individual colony. From the 48 I secured 6,162 pounds of extracted honey, and sold almost the entire crop for 25 cents

per lb. This capped the climax, and inquiries in regard to the new industry began to come in from all sides. Beginners were eager to know what hives to adopt, and where to get honey-extractors. As the hives in use seemed very poorly adapted to the use of the extractor, and as the machines offered for sale were heavy and poorly adapted to the purpose, there really seemed to be no other way before me than to manufacture these implements. Unless I did this I should be compelled to undertake a correspondence that would occupy a great part of my time without affording any compensation of any account. The fullest directions I knew how to give for making plain simple hives, etc., were from time to time published in the American Bee Journal; but the demand for further particulars was such that a circular was printed, and, shortly after, a second edition; then another, and another. These were intended to answer the greater part of the queries; and from the cheering words received in regard to them it seemed that the idea was a happy one.

"Until 1873 all these circulars were sent out gratuitously; but at that time it was deemed best to issue a quarterly at 25 cents per year, for the purpose of answering these inquiries. The very first number was received with such favor that it was immediately changed to a monthly at 75 cents. The name of it was Gleanings in Bee Culture, and it was gradually enlarged until, in 1876, the price was changed to $1.00. During all this time it has served the purpose excellently of answering questions as they came up, both old and new; and even if some new subscriber should ask in regard to something that had been discussed at length but a short time before, it was an easy matter to refer him to it or send him the number containing the subject in question.

"When Gleanings was about commencing its fifth year, inquirers began to dislike being referred to something that was published half a dozen years before. Besides, the decisions that were then arrived at perhaps needed to be considerably modified to meet present wants. Now you can see whence the necessity for this A B C book, its office and the place we propose to have it fill. A. I. ROOT.”

"December, 1878."

(1) Proper management in late summer and early fall, is the making of next year's honey crop.

(2) In this locality, colonies united near the close of the summer flow, or beginning of the fall flow, are better than colonies united near the close of the fall flow.

(3) Colonies here, going into winter with a food chamber full of stores, come through the winter strong, and do most of their swarming ahead of the main honey flow, so that parent colonies often store some surplus, while colonies weak from lack of stores may not reach swarming strength until the main flow is on, then they swarm, and it may be too late for either the swarm or parent colony to store surplus unless the flow continues for some time.

(4) Dequeening for ten days cannot be depended upon to prevent swarming in this locality. A period of 15 to 18 days followed by the introduction of a young queen mated from a nuclei, is best for me.

(5) In returning the old queen to a dequeened colony, cells should be destroyed the day before the old queen is returned. If returned immediately after the killing, she may bring out a swarm, leaving the bees without any means of rearing a queen. One pulled this stunt on me this season. I thought they might have a virgin, although I could not find one, and left them alone. Several days later I found that laying workers had started.

(6) One colony last season, from which I had taken the queen with two frames of brood for 10 days, swarmed out after the queen and brood were returned. I had overlooked two cells which had been built side by side right up against some drone brood. The old queen was killed, and the two cells were left, resulting in two swarms after the young queens emerged, and the bees requeened themselves from the nuclei brood which had been returned. This colony must have been without any egg laying for about 28 days other than what the old queen had deposited in the two nuclei combs. However, due to the hon

ey flow continuing late, this colony stored sufficient for winter.

(7) A queenless colony with little or no larvae to feed, seems to store more honey for a while than one with a laying queen, but most of it goes into empty cells in the brood department.

(8) Some hybrid colonies make a good showing early in the season, and probably for one whole season, but pure Italians most always prove to be the best, year after year.-B. P. Sieber, Aurora, Nebr.

AN OLD METHOD OF TRANSFERRING BEES

Everett M. Warren

Every little while some one writes to the bee journals and describes a different method of transferring bees from box hives into modern, movable-frame hives. While all these methods differ, and some are more or less involved and complicated, most of them get the bees out of the box hives. These different methods indicate that we don't like the messy and unsatisfactory job of tearing the old box apart, cutting out the combs and fitting them into the new frames. Such a procedure always results in too much drone comb, too many stretched and crooked combs, and not infrequently starts robbing. Very often the queen is lost, besides. The loss of the old queen, however, might be an advantage, as many box hive colonies need requeening with queens from a better strain of bees.

A simple and efficient method, which has been used by old-timers and present day beekeepers alike, is as follows: Turn the box hive upside down, remove all, or nearly all of the bottom, and place over it a standard hive body filled with drawn combs or frames with full sheets of foundation, and a cover. Close all openings between the old and the new hive, leaving only an entrance in front, between the two hive bodies. This will cause the bees to go in and out above the old crooked combs and below the new ones. By turning the old hive over we also turn the crooked combs upside down. This puts the cells in an unnatural position and makes them somewhat less suitable for brood-rearing and the