FIFTEENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART VIII. 527 



present Suel Foster of Muscatine, Dr. Elisha Gallup of Orchard, Iowa, and 

 Ellen S. Tupper of Washington, Iowa, myself, and a number of others 

 whose names I can not now recall. 



At the meeting the subject of a frame suitable for our northern climate 

 was discussed at some length, and the sense of the meeting seemed to be 

 for a frame whose outside dimension should be twelve inches square, and 

 be known as the American frame. A number present who favored that 

 size made the remark in substance as follows: 



"I have several hundred combs and Langstroth frames. What shall 

 I do with those combs to change to the American frame, and not sustain 

 material loss?" 



It should be remembered that at that time comb foundation was not 

 to be had. Consequently, every scrap of comb was carefully used; hence, 

 the desire on the part of some not to change from the combs then in use. 

 But in order to yield to the demand for the hives, the writer manufactured 

 what was then known as the Champion Hive, and later the Alternating 

 Hive, a horizontal divisible brood chamber hive, also the Langstroth Hives. 



The aforementioned Furman of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, was then selling 

 the Langstroth hive already nailed and painted, from wagons traveling 

 over the state, which necessarily made those hives expensive, and a de- 

 mand sprung up for a cheaper hive. To gratify this demand, we manu- 

 factured for a while a so-called "Plain Hive," which is today practically 

 the same hive with the dovetailed or lock corners. About this time the 

 writer in reading a German bee journal saw the description of the cen- 

 trifugal force honey extractor, as invented by Major Hursky. I long pon- 

 dered on a process of extracting the honey from the comb and saving the 

 comb. As is already mentioned, combs were considered a very valuable 

 adjunct to practical beekeeping, and even the present day I have to smile 

 at the numerous attempts to extract honey by air pressure, suction, etc. 

 But as soon as I learned of the use of centrifugal force to extract honey 

 from the combs, I instantly saw the requirement necessary to accomplish 

 the result. 



I then at once used the tall tub constructed with wooden reel surrounded 

 with common wire cloth, and in the absence of a gear, I wound around 

 the center post a stout string and used the center reel to revolve the center 

 wheel, like a boy would use a string on a top. Although decidedly crude 

 as compared with the present extractors, it did extract the honey from 

 the comb, and as far as we know, this probably was the first honey ex- 

 tractor manufactured in the state of Iowa, if not in the United States. 



At that time, in the early '70's, we still had to depend mainly on the 

 wild flowers of the prairies and the wild fruit bloom for our supply of 

 honey. Goldenrod at that time furnished an abundance of fall honey, and 

 the writer with one assistant did actually extract 3,000 lbs. of goldenrod 

 honey in a single day of a consistency so thick that a common table knife 

 would stand upright in a bowl of this goldenrod honey. 



Honey crop at that time was very spasmodic, and I kept a record, not 

 only of the product of every colony, but also the various yields during 

 one year and successive years, and one record shows that for four sue- 



