THE EVOLUTION OF THE BEE-HIVE. l87 



mur; Sweden, Linnaeus; but the question of the study of bee-life 

 for the purpose of a food supply by the development of hives 

 that could be handled and attended to as other domestic animals 

 did not commence till the latter part of the 18th century or the be- 

 ginning of the 19th. Thomas Nutt was one of the first Englishmen to 

 condemn the brutal custom of the destruction of the bees for the 

 purpose of securing the honey. The introduction of supernumer- 

 ary reciprocals to box and skips for the purpose of storing of 

 surplus honey, i.e., honey over and above that required for the 

 bees' winter use, was a step towards a much higher development. 

 Under the old system of bee-keeping the loss entailed upon the 

 bees by the destruction of comb was not understood. 



The bar-frame, as we now have it, was not the invention of any 

 one person. The nuclei were narrow bars that rested on rebates 

 on two sides of the hive. To these the bees attached their combs 

 and fixed it to the sides of the hive. Both sides of these combs 

 had to be cut away before they could be removed. There appears 

 to be no record of the person who introduced these movable slots. 

 The very slight advantage obtained by their use never made them 

 general. The knowledge of this slight improvement remained 

 without further development for fully a century, when Francois 

 Huber (Huber the elder) invented his ren9wned book hive, a hive 

 that worked the same as a book is opened or closed. This invention 

 was not for the purpose of aiding in_ the saving of bee life, or an 

 increase in the honey supply, but for observation and scientific 

 research. Yet Huber's invention and the one bar or slot already 

 referred to were the parents of the complete frame we now have. 

 Langstroth was well acquainted with both of these improvements. 

 At the time he, in America, was thinking out and perfecting the 

 ideal hive that is now in almost universal use, with practical bee 

 men, Dzierzon, in Germany, was engaged in a similar research. 

 The latter was trying to improve upon the one bar system, where 

 all combs had to be more or less cut away. The main difference 

 in these hives while the two men were engaged in perfecting 

 similar thoughts was Langstrotli's hive worked from the top and 

 Dzierzon's from the back. Langstroth's hive, in the earliest stages 

 of its development, was far more workable than Dzierzon's. In 

 the former any comb could be removed singly ; whereas in the 

 latter to get at any particular comb all those intervening between 

 the worker and the required comb had to be removed — thus if the 

 tenth frame was required nine others had to be removed, and sus- 

 pended before the one wanted could be obtained. 



