GLKANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Apk. 1. 



her present ovipositor will be modified into an- 

 other sting, so stfe'll sting double and lay none? 

 Prof. Cook, is the dictionary rigiit? 



As A NEW WAY of introducing queens, even 

 immediately after removing thi- old one, a Ger- 

 man journal instructs to dip the new queen in 

 liquid honey and then, without further ado, to 

 drop her among the bees. If I am not much 

 mistaken, that was a common way years ago, 

 but fell into disrepute for some reason, probably 

 because too many such queens were killed by 

 the bees. 



Friknd Root, whafs the matter with you 

 and that White man on p. 222? Why, you talk 

 almost as if there was something wrong in dis- 

 tilleries. Don't you know that distilleries are 

 honorable and according to law? You can "• ve- 

 hemently protest " till doomsday, and it won't 

 change the law so long as you are accommo- 

 dating enough to vote for legislators who will 

 continue the law. 



LANGSTROTH'S REMINISCENCES. 



IXTEKESTING INCIDENTS OF SAMUEI. WAGNER, 

 FOUNDER OF THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



In the first edition of my book great promi- 

 nence was given to utilizing every good piece of 

 comb, and directions were furnished for drain- 

 ing the honey from tlie combs. This was found 

 to be such verj; tedious and imperfect work 

 that T studied much how to devise some way by 

 which the honey could be more readily extract- 

 ed. Often, when visiting a brother-in-law who 

 was steward of the Pennsylvania Hospital, I 

 was less than a minute's walk from a centrifu- 

 gal clothes-wringer, a glance at which might 

 have enabled me to solve the problem; or had 

 any thing, in this connection, called my atten- 

 tion to the water flying from a grindstone, or 

 the mud from a carriage-wheel, the idea of using 

 centrifugal force would, in all probability, have 

 suggested itself., Further, to show my blindness 

 on this point I was actually using centrifugal 

 force for emptying some of the contents of 

 combs, before the advent of the honey -extractor. 

 When I wished to get rid of partly grown iarva^ 

 I used to fill both sides of a comb, containing 

 drones, with water: and then by a swift motion 

 of my outstretched arm, first in one direction 

 and then in another. I flirted out the water and 

 with it went all the larvte. While thus empty- 

 ing some of the contents of the combs by cen- 

 trifugal force I yet failed absolutely to take the 

 final step by contriving some way to empty the 

 honey by the same force. 



The actual application of this principle for 

 emptying honey was, however, reserved for a 

 more fortunate man. An officer in the Austrian 

 army, by the name of Hruschka, gave a piece of 

 comb, with honey in uncapped cells, to his little 

 son, who put it into a tin bucki^t which he was 

 playfully whirling about his head with a string, 

 and, thus all unconscious of the great results to 

 follow, gave birth to the honey-emptier. His 

 father, noticing that some of the honey had 

 been thrown out of the open cells, saw at once 

 the importance of the idea, and made a machine, 

 a honey-emptying machine, which ought never 

 to have been called by any oth^r name than a 

 Hruschka. Shall those of who know so well what 

 was needed, and to some of whom the slightest 

 hint might have sufficed for its invention, be 

 mean enough to try to belittle the merits of the 

 man who actually did the thing? So long as the 

 bee gathers its precious sweets, his name will be 

 held in grateful remembrance; for the practical 

 movable frame, without this invention, would 

 have fallen very far short of what it now ac- 

 complishes. 



On page 80 of my first edition may be found 

 these words: 



Ingenious efforts Ji;ive l)een made of late years to 

 construct luiifiiinl lioiiey- combs of porcelain, to be 

 used Xov fccdhKj bees. No one, to my knowledge, lias 

 ever attempted to imitate tlie delicate mecliaiiism of 

 the liee so closelj' as to construct artificial combs for 

 the ordinary uses of the hive; altlioug'h fur a long- 

 time 1 have entertained the idea as very desirable, 

 and yet as barely possilile. I am at present engaged 

 in a course of experiments on this subject, the re- 

 sults of which in due time I shall communicate to 

 the public. 



While I was engaged in the experiments allud- 

 ed to, Mr. Samuel Wagner, with whom I was 

 then in constant correspondence, wrote to me 

 that he had an invention in his mind which he 

 thought would largely increase the value of my 

 movable frames. Suspecting that we were on 

 the same track, and learning, after informing 

 him of my plans, that he had made some prog- 

 ress in the matter, and that his experiments 

 were begun prior to mine, I at once relegated 

 the whole matter to him. If, like Mr. A. I. Root, 

 to whose inventive mind modern bee-keeping 

 owes so much, Mr. Wagner could have associ- 

 ated himself wiih aman of such rare mechanical 

 ingenuity as Mr. A. Washburn, he would prob- 

 ably have perfected his invention of artificial 

 conib foundation, not only before Mr. Root's 

 grand success with his rollers, but before any 

 thing had been attempted in this line by Euro- 

 pean bee-keepers. 



Perhaps no better place can be found to pay a 

 deserved tribute to the memory of the man who 

 did so much for the promotion of American api- 

 culture. I have already mentioned how I ob- 

 tained from Mr. Wagner my first knowledge of 

 Dzierzon: and the following extract from his 

 letter to me (see p. 18 of the 1853 edition) will 

 show how he first became acquainted with ray 

 invention. 



York, Pa., Dec. 34, 1853. 



Dear Sir:— The, Dzierzon theory, and the system of 

 bee-manag-ement based thereon, were orig-inally 

 promulg-att'd, liijpntlieticalln, in the "Eivh!<tadt Bie)tcii- 

 zcifuiig." oi- hee-joui'nal, in 1815, and atonci arrest- 

 ed my attention. Subsequently wlien, in 1848, at the 

 instance of the Prussian government, the Rev. Mr. 

 Dzieizon published his "Theory and Practice of Bee 

 Culture." 1 imported a copy, which reached me in 

 1849, and which I translated prior to January, 1S50. 

 Befoi-e the translation was completed 1 received a 

 visit from my friend, the Rev. Dr. Berg, of Philadel- 

 phia, and in the course of con .-ersation on bee-lseep- 

 ing I mentioned to him the Dzieizon theory and sys- 

 tem as one which I regarded as new and very supe- 

 rior, though 1 liad had no ouportunit.^ for testing it 

 practically. In February following, when in Phila- 

 delphia, I left with him the translation in manu- 

 script, up to which period 1 doubt whether any 

 other person in this country had any knowledge of 

 Mr. Dzierzon. Except to Dr. Berg I had never men- 

 tioned it to any one, save in very general terms. 



In September, ]§51, Dr. Berg again visited York, 

 and stated to me your investigations, discoveries, 

 and inventions. From the account Dr. Berg gave 

 me, I felt assured that you had devised substantially 

 the same system as that so successfully pursued by 

 Mr. Dzierzon; but how far ijav)- hive resembled his I 

 was unable to judge from description alone. I in- 

 ferred, liowever, several points oi' difference. The 

 coincidence as to system, and the principles on which 

 it was evidently founded, struck me as exeeedingly 

 singular and mteresting, because 1 felt confident 

 that you had no more knowledge of Mr. Dzierzon and 

 his labors, before Dr. Berg mentioned him and his 

 book to you, than Mr. Dzierzon had of you. These 

 circumstances made me very anxious to e-xamine 

 your hives, and induced me to visit your apiary in 

 West Philadelphia last August. In the absence of 

 the keeper, as I informed you, I took the liberty to 

 exploi-e the premises thoroughly, opening and in- 

 specting a number of the hives, and noticing the in- 

 ternal arrangements of the parts. The result was, I 

 came away convinced that, though your system was 

 based on the same principles as Dzierzou's, yet your 

 hive was almost totally diffeient from his in con- 

 struction and arrangement; that, while the same ob- 



