There’s much buzz about ATI’s Aug. 16 picnic this year.

 Joining us will be NPS Ranger Craig Campbell to discuss preservation of Ohio’s native bee colonies

of 30,000-40,000 diminutive “flyers” on Wright-Patterson AFB.

Expect a honey treat in your picnic lunch along with Jersey Mike’s sandwiches, fruit, and cookies. The lunch and cool drinks will be served at 12 noon in front of the Huffman Prairie Interpretive Center on Wright Brothers Hill.

 

If it rains, lunch and the bee presentation will be in the auditorium of the center.

  

Cost for the picnic lunch remains the same: $14 for an adult and $39 for a family of up to five persons.

 

If you please, make your reservations a new way. You may now use the Aviation Trail website, www.aviationtrailinc.org, for ticket purchases with a credit card. After accessing the web site, click on “Membership-Donations-Reservation Orders.” (Or CLICK HERE for that page).

 

 

 

 

  

Or, you may send a check to Aviation Trail, Inc., P.O. Box 633, Wright Brothers Branch, Dayton, OH 45409.

 

Reservations deadline is Friday, Aug. 14.

 

ATI President Marvin Christian remarked how the Wrights’ flying on Huffman Prairie had a “bee link.”  “In 1904 Amos I. Root, Ohio owner of a beekeeping supply house and publisher of Gleanings in Bee Culture, keenly observed the Wrights’ trial flights and penned several articles about the endeavors for his periodical.

“Ironically his very accurate observations were written for beekeepers, not experimenters in manned flight. That is one of the interesting facts about early narrations of what the Wrights were accomplishing on the prairie,” he said.

   

Campbell’s power point bee talk will discuss the one-year-old, volunteer Propolis Project to promote bee pollinator health and sustain locally acclimated bees. Recently four small bee colonies of 10,000 bees each have been introduced to the Huffman Prairie area as part of the project.

  

A local native, Campbell has a degree in evolutionary biology from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. He previously led wilderness tours and served with the Park Service at the Grand Canyon.

  

ATI traditionally hosts a social event for all its members near Aug. 19, the mutual birthdays of Orville and Katharine Wright. Orville was born in 1871 on Hawthorn Street in Dayton and Katharine in 1874, also on Hawthorn Street.

  

Kid activities scheduled for the 16th are bottle rockets with Jim Beisner, a member of ATI’s board of trustees and the WACO Learning Center in Troy, Ohio, and parachute backpack “fittings” by members of ATI’s Parachute Museum committee. 

 

 

Noon, Sunday, August 16, 2015 at

Wright Brothers Memorial

Kauffman Ave. near the Route 444 intersection,

Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio 45433