930 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Dec. 15. 



-with nobody, and have no doubt that I should be 

 amply rewarded. 



liam concerned to see tliat your health is not flrni 

 yet. I have found great help from the malted milk. 

 Might it not benefit you ? 



I say, mix with houej'— not sugar— for honey, as 

 you know, is a partially predigested food, according 

 to Prof. Cook and others. L. L. Langstroth. 



Dayton, O., Aug. 19. 



[At the time this was received my health 

 was such that I gave very little attention to 

 business, and among other things this was 

 passed by. If others have tried the feeding as 

 suggested by our departed benefactor, we 

 should be glad to hear from them. — Ed.] 



LOOKING BACEWABD. 



A REVIEW OF APICULTURE IN OLD TIMES AND 

 IN OLD COUNTRIES. 



By Charles Dadant. 



The men who, instead of destroying their 

 bees, conceived the idea of domesticating them 

 in' order to get the crop of honey wihout so 

 much work, made use of hollow Itree trunks; 

 after that they made hives of baked clay, of 

 wickerwork, of straw, of cut nstone, and of 

 boards, etc. Unfortunately it was difficult to 

 get the honey without destroying the bees. Be- 

 sides that, the wax being greatly sought after, 

 especially for use in churches, where no other 

 kind of illuminating material was ^employed, 

 its value prompted bee-men itn suffocate their 

 bees in order to rob them of their stores. I 

 should add here, that, in the greater part of the 

 countries dominated by Catholicism, this mas- 

 sacre of cbionies was inevitable, for their laws 

 forced the inhabitants of villages to furnish 

 the churches so many hundredweights of wax 

 every year. It was thus that the destruction 

 of the richest apiaries became a lucrative busi- 

 ness, as it is to-day in France, in Gatinals, near 

 Paris, where there are professionals who make 

 a business of laying out apiaries, and who are 

 supplied regularly by persons who raise bees, 

 not for their honey, but for the purpose of sell- 

 ing them when the hives are full. 



In proportion to the spread of bee cuture, 

 their habitations were improved. Particularly 

 was this the case in Greece, where a knowledge 

 of their habits and the methods of culture was 

 developed. 



Delia Rocca, in 1790, relates that the apicul- 

 turists in the Cycladean Archipelago, in Greece, 

 used long hives of baked clay, which they plac- 

 ed horizontally through the thickness of walls 

 which were made expressly for that purpose. 

 The bottom of each hive was removable, and 

 one could get the honey almost without dis- 

 turbing the bees, and without being subject to 

 the stings of the bees as they issued from the 

 front end of the cylindrical hive. He showed 

 also a board hive, the frames of which were up- 

 held by means of small top-bars or slats, under 



which, and attached to them, the bees built 

 their comb. 



Hives with movable frames were still in use 

 in Greece in Delia Rocca's time, made after 

 another fashion; for Liger, in his "Rustic 

 House," printed in 1742, shows the design of a 

 hive, with entrance, made of wickerwork, and 

 furnished with top-bars from which were sus- 

 pended the frames The progress of Greece in 

 apiculture need not surprise us when we re- 

 member that, 300 years before the Christian 

 era, Aristotle had already published some de- 

 scriptions of the habits of bees. 



If we refer to the ancient writings on api- 

 culture we find that movable frames were not 

 used in other countries until much later. Those 

 who suffocated their bees, or those who sold 

 bees to those who did so, did not have, and do 

 not now have, hives with more than one com- 

 partment. Others, finding this practice cruel, 

 or desiring to preserve their colonies, placed 

 surplus-cases on top of the hive-bodies; after- 

 ward, hives with several divisions, or "sto- 

 ries," "horizontally divisible." Afterward 

 some were constructed with two vertical divi- 

 sions; then with three. Huber, toward the 

 end of the last century, in order to study the 

 habits of bees, made what is known as the 

 " leaf" hive, which one might open as he would 

 the leaves of a book as it stands on end. 



Finally in Germany, Dzierzon published, in 

 1846, a description of his hive with movable 

 frames, which opened fiom behind, and the 

 frames of which were supported simply by lit- 

 tle bars. 



In the same year 1846, Debeauvoys, in France, 

 published a book in which he described his 

 hive with movable frames which were remov- 

 ed at the side. I have already related in the 

 journals how I became acquainted with De- 

 beauvoys and his hive. It was in 1849 that I 

 visited the Paris exposition, when I saw, at the 

 end of the hall through which I was rambling, 

 a magnificent comb of honey on top of a board 

 hive. Without paying any attention lo the 

 rebuffs which I met in my efforts to get near 

 the hive, I pushed through the crowd. The 

 exhibitor. Mr. Debeauvoys, was not there. One 

 of his neighbors was there with an artificial 

 brooder, in whicli chickens were hatched every 

 day. These little chicks were perched on top 

 of the brooder, and looked quite forlorn in their 

 seeming distress at finding themselves in the 

 midst of such a scene. Their owner said tome 

 that the bee-keeper would be back soon. Sure 

 enough, DebeRuvoys, a rather heavy man, with 

 pleasing figure and lively deportment, arrived 

 in a few moments and explained to me his hive 

 and its manner of manipulation. It was a 

 frame hive, opening at the sides, and it lacked 

 nothing to make it practicable except a spaci, 

 between the ends of the frames and the hive; 

 for the frames, having no top-bar longer than 



