no 



(CLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Feb. 1.5. 



(^UEEN-EXCLUOEKS, says Ramblpr, in Review, 

 let queens through not only once in a while, 

 bnt twice in a while. That's rather discourag- 

 ing. I thought the last lot I got worked every 

 time: but I'd give something to be certain. 

 Suppose Gleanings gives reports of successes 

 and failures with virgin queens, telling, if pos- 

 sible, the kind of perforations used. 



The severe cold of this winter is being 

 commented on by the editor of B. B. J., it hav- 

 ing actually gone as low as 5° above zero in one 

 place! Eless your heart. Mr. Editor, come and 

 spend a few days at Marengo, and you'll call .5 

 above mild. Why, it's been playing around 

 zero for weeks, sometimes 20° below, and yet it 

 has gone a good bit lower other winters. 



The nameless disease is reported so differ- 

 ently in different cases that L. B. Smith, in A. 

 B. J., thinks there must be two separate dis- 

 eases. I've had more or less of it for years, and 

 don't think it of importance enough to make a 

 fuss about; but it seems quite a different thing 

 with others. Mr. Smith saying. "They just die 

 by the wholesale— a strong colony dying out in 

 a few days." 



LANGSTROTH'S REMINISCENCES. 



AN INTERESTING ACCOUNT OF THE CIRCU.N[- 



STANCES THAT LEI) TO THE INVENTION 



OF THE LANGSTROTH HIVE .\ND 



FRAME. 



The principle of having the bees suspend each 

 comb from a separate bar, by which Dzierzon 

 accomplished such great practical results, had, 

 indeed, been known before his time. In 16T5 

 (see "A Journey into Greece," by Geo. Wheel- 

 er, page 411) the bee-keepers of Mount Ilymet- 

 tus used it in a rude form, in making artificial 

 swarms: and in 1790 the Abbe Delia Rocca 

 shows in plate No. 3 of the third volume of his 

 work on bees, that he used bars with •' wings " 

 similar to those used by the Baron von Ber- 

 lepsch. to keep the combs at suitable distances 

 apart. In the sixth volume of Hamet's bee- 

 journal, U Apiculture, p. 146. may also be found 

 Delia Rocca's description of his hives, made, as 

 he said, " after the method of the ancient 

 Greeks." On p. 147 of the same journal there is 

 a cut and description of a hive with two tiers of 

 movable slats, and with i-ide-opening doors, in- 

 vented by Buzairies. A description of this hive 

 may be found in " Memoires de TAcademie de 

 I'Industrie Fran(;aise. de 18P.2:" but the invent- 

 or says that he made it known to the Society of 

 Natural History in 1828 — some seven years be- 

 fore Dzierzon began to keep bees. These pi'oofs 

 that hives with slats, and even with side-opening 

 doors, were used and described prior to Dzier- 

 zon's writings, are not given with any intention 

 to detract from his merits, for there is not only 

 no proof or even probability that he knew of 

 them, but it is very certain that, until by his 

 great skill he had made such hives a success, 

 they had contributed scarcely any thing of value 

 , to practical apiculture. 



Having by the use of my improved bar-hive 

 secured a more perfect contiol of the combs than 

 I could find in any other hive, I began to see 

 that artificial'swarming might be made much 

 more successful than by Iluber's method; for 

 about this time I discovered that bees without 

 a queen, if they build comb at all, make it of 

 drone size; a fact unknown to Huber, and fatal 

 to any practical success in artificial increase by 

 his methods. 



The publication of my discovery, made in the 

 summer of 18.51, that bees could be trained to 

 work in large observing hives, even when ex- 

 posed to the full light of day, without obscuring 



the glass with propolis, brought me a visit from 

 the late Rev. J. H. Berg, D.D., of Philadelphia. 

 From him I first learned of the existence of such 

 a person as Dzierzon. and of the great attention 

 he had attracted by his successful management 

 of bees. Before Dr. Berg communicated any 

 particulars of Dzierzon's methods I showed him 

 my hives, and explained ray system of manage- 

 ment. He found our hives to differ in some 

 very important respects; but he was gn-atly as- 

 tonished at the remarkable similarity in our 

 methods of management, as my investigations 

 had evidently been conducted without even the 

 slightest knowledge of Dzierzon's labors. He 

 informed me that Mr. Samuel Wagner, cashier 

 of a bank at York, Pa., had made a translation 

 of Dzierzon's work on bees, the loan of which he 

 procured for me. 



No words can express the absorbing interest 

 with which I devoured this work. I recognized 

 at once its author as the Oreat Master of mod- 

 ern apiculture. His discovery of parthenogene- 

 sis threw a flood of light upon the profound 

 mysteries in the physiology of the honey-bee, 

 which had so perplexed observers from the 

 time of Aristotle, and which even Swammer- 

 dam. Reaumur, and Huber had failed to solve. 

 I spon perceived that I had been anticipated in 

 more than one important discovery, and that he 

 was well acquainted with the fact, with all its 

 practical results, that bees without a queen 

 build only drone-combs. Artificial processes, 

 which I had supposed to be all my own, and 

 which I had practiced on a comparatively small 

 scale, had been conducted by him so largely and 

 so successfully as to secure special recognition 

 by the king of Prussia, at whose request his 

 book was written. 



In the fall of 18,51 1 had nearly completed my 

 application for a patent upon my improved bar 

 hive. It will, no doubt, appear very strange to 

 persons not familiar with the ordinary progress 

 of inventions, that the shallow space between 

 the tops of the bars and the board on which the 

 receptacles for surplus honey rested, and which 

 I proposed to make one of the leading features 

 in my patent, did not at once suggest itself to 

 me that uprights might be fastened to the bars, 

 so as to give the same bee-space between the 

 front and rear walls of the hive, and so change 

 the slats into movable frames. But I used the 

 shallow space above the bars, foi" a whole sea- 

 son, without ever connecting the two ideas: 

 and tlien. only when it was too late to make any 

 use of it in the apiaiT for that year, did tlie sim- 

 ple idea of the movable frames present itself to 

 my mind. Returning late in the afternoon from 

 the apiary, which I had established some two 

 miles from my city home, and pondering, as I 

 had so often done before, how I could get rid of 

 the disagreeable necessity of cutting the attach- 

 ments of the combs from the walls of the hives, 

 and rejecting, for obvious reasons, the plan of 

 uprights, close fitting (or nearly so) to these 

 walls, the almost self-evident idea of using the 

 same bee-space as in the shallow chamber came 

 into my mind, and in a moment the suspended 

 movable frames, kept at suitable distances from 

 each other and the case containing them, came 

 into being. Seeing by intuition, as it were, the 

 end from the beginning. I could scarcely refrain 

 from shouting out my " Eureka! " in the open 

 streets. 



At that time there was visiting me my college 

 classmate and dear friend, the late Rev. E. D. 

 Sanders, who afterward founded the Presbyteri- 

 an Hospital in Philadelphia, and who had ta- 

 ken that season a lively interest in my apicul- 

 tural experiments. Full of enthusiasm, we dis- 

 cus.sed, until a late hour, the results which both 

 of us thought must come from using movable 

 frames instead of bars. Before I sought my 



