ICO 



ULEANliS'tiS liN liKK CULTURE. 



Mak. 1. 



lho> disinfected air. He also approves crowding 

 bees into a small space, so that the poison may 

 be more condensed. 



A BEE-BKUSH is ihus described by Mrs. Jen- 

 nie Atchley. in A.B.J.: "A brush made of 

 corn shucks is good, tearing the shucks into 

 shreds, and tying on to a handle like a little 

 broom; this makes the best and cheapest brush 

 of any thing I have tiled. When it becomes 

 hard, dip it in water." That's good, Jennie: 

 but wouldn't you like Coggshall's better? 



The genial face of J. A. Green, together 

 with his biography, appears in A. B. J. He 

 says he doesn't expect to be married till Fortune 

 has smiled on him a little more kindly. You're 

 making a bad mistake. Jiramie. Fortune doesn't 

 smile on any such foolishness. Never you mind 

 Fortune. Just get the girl to smile on you all 

 right, then lix up the hive in good shape as you 

 can. and Fortune will snicker right out at you. 



LANGSTROTH'S REMINISCENCES. 



i-angstboth's movable frame ; how near 

 others came to inventing it. 



Early in the spring of 1S.52 I moved all my 

 bees to my new apiary, adding to them a large 

 number of stocks in common box hives, which 

 were afterward transferred to the movable- 

 frame hives. This apiary was under the charge 

 of Henry liourquin, a very skillful cabinet- 

 maker, and an enthusiastic lover of bees. He 

 made the pieces necessary to change my bars 

 into movable frames; and on the first day 

 warm enough for bees to fiy, the side attach- 

 ments of the combs to the front and rear walls 

 of the hive were cut, the bees shaken off the 

 combs, and the uprights and bottom strips 

 nailed in place; and so the bar hive became at 

 once a movable-frame hive, in full possession of 

 a stock of bees. 



Imagine me so absorbed in manipulating 

 these frames, with the bees upon them— remov- 

 ing from the hive and replacing them— shaking 

 the bees from them, and changing their relative 

 positions, etc., as not to notice the presence of 

 an old bee-keeper, nor even to hear him, until 

 he fairly shouted out, " Friend Lorenzo, you 

 are so taken up with your new hive that you 

 seem unable to hear me, or to see any thing 

 else. No doubt you think you have made a 

 great invention: but I say you have made no 

 invention;" and then, repeating the words, 

 "you have made no invention," several times 

 to my great astonishment, he wound up by 

 saying. " Friend Lorenzo, you have made no 

 invention at all. but. rather, a per/cct revolu- 

 tion in biM'-keeping!" You have got what I 

 have so long wished for— that control of the 

 combs of a hive, by which you can at any time 

 know the condition of your bees; and, if any 

 thing is wrong, be able to apply the proper 

 remedy." 



Thatsame season I had over one hundred mov- 

 able-frame hives 7iiade, some of which were sold 

 with the right to use the patent whenever it 

 should is-ue; but by far the larger number 

 were publicly used in my own apiary in West 

 I'hihidelphia. 



I am the more particular in recording these 

 facts and dates, because afterward there was 

 an unfortunate misunderstanding of them by 

 the late Baron von Berlepsch, to who<e re- 

 searches and wiitings modern bee-keeping is so 

 greatly indebted. In the Feb. No. of the 7th 

 Vol. (1872) of the Ainericdn Bee Journal, I 

 have given a full account of this matter, and to 

 this account I refer those who wish for fuller 

 information. There can b(i no doubt that my 



recorded application for a patent on a movable 

 frame antedated that account of his hive which 

 Berlepsch sent to the editor of the Bienen 

 Zeitung, nor that he afterward strongly con- 

 demned his own invention, and requested the 

 editor to relegate it to his lumber-garret. Nor 

 did he. until some years latei-. refer again in 

 the columns of the Bienen Zeitung to the sub- 

 ject of movable frames; and when he did 

 notice them, my hive was already largely in 

 l)bhlic us(!, and a demonstrated success. 



It was not until aftn- I had applit^d for a 

 patent that 1 had any knowledge of th(i hive of 

 the late Major William A. Munn. of England, 

 which was patented in France in 1843. The 

 first edition of the pamphlet in which this hive 

 was described (1844) had been so effectually 

 suppressed by the author, who offered the 

 second edition free to any one releasing the first, 

 that it was with great difficulty and at consid- 

 erable expense that I obtained a copy of it, 

 Major Munn himself not having preserved a 

 single one. The second edition of his pamphlet, 

 in which he materially changed the plan of his 

 hive, was published in 18.51 ; but its great cost, 

 and the absolute impossibility of manipulating 

 with it to any advantage, made his hive, either 

 for observation or for practical use, very much 

 inferior to the Huber hive, which it was de- 

 signed to supplant. It was never referred to by 

 Bevan. nor recommended by any other English 

 authority in apiculture. 



After my hive, in a modified form, had been 

 introduced into England by the lamented 

 Mr. Woodbury, Mr. Munn again tried to bring 

 his hive into notice; and he evidently thought 

 that my invention had been copied from his, 

 while he had been denied the proper credit to 

 which he was entitled. I need hardly say how 

 entirely he was mistaken in this opinion. 



Injustice to the Major.it should be stated 

 that he seems to have been the first person who 

 attempted to use movable frames inside of a 

 case or box. His prioritv in this respect was 

 evidently unknown to Kline when he published, 

 in German, his history of movable-frame hives. 

 Mr. Munn had certainly struck out a very im- 

 portant idea, but he failed so entirely in adapt- 

 ing it to practical use that his invention pro- 

 duced scarcely a perceptible ripple upon the 

 apicultural ocean. In a private letter to me, 

 he says that his great difficulty was in prevent- 

 ing the bees, when left to themselves for a sharp 

 time, from shutting up the shop.'" A mere 

 glance at his hive, as figured and described in 

 1851. with the wide spaces left, in some places, 

 between the frames and the case, shows very 

 plainly a sufficient cause for his failure, even if 

 th(>re had not been others almost as obvious. 



In 1847, Mr. Debeauvoys. of France, introduc- 

 ed an invention, also designed to supersede the 

 Huber hive. In its first form it proved a com- 

 plete failure. There being no bee-space left 

 between his frames and the case containing 

 them, the bees soon propolized them to the roof 

 and front and rear walls of this case, so as to 

 make them practically immovable. In 1851, a 

 memorable year in the history of movable- 

 frame hives. Debeauvoys published improve- 

 ments upon his first plan. and. later still, made 

 other modifications of them. But with all his 

 efforts, he failed, as Hainet, editor of a French 

 bee-journal, writes, to secur(> the approval of 

 those most largely engaged in bee - keeping, 

 while it was the great good fortune of my hive, 

 from the very start, to find the most favor with 

 this very class. 



The Debeauvoys hive, in its approved form, 

 kept the uprights of the frame at proper dis- 

 tances from the walls of the case, and some of 

 its worse defects might easily have been reme- 

 died. To fail, after coming so near to success. 



