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GLEANIKG>S IN BEE CULTURE. 



Nov. 15. 



er extent than if he had used his own eyes in- 

 stead of those of his servant. The boy pianist, 

 Hoffman, when in America, would bring an au- 

 dience to tears by his marvelous rendition of the 

 best worlis of the great masters; but if he plays 

 the same pieces better and better till he is of 

 middle age the tears will dry up, and at best 

 nothing but a clap of the hands remain. We 

 are very apt to make allowance for the weak 

 and unfortunate, and it is well that we do. 



It is impossible for me, and I presume it is for 

 anybody, to state just how much originality 

 maybe found in Ruber's " Observations," and 

 just how far his conclusions are now accepted 

 by bee-keepers. In Mr. Kellen's article, refer- 

 red to above, which I translated from the Ger- 

 man, he says: 



FRANCIS llUBf^K— BOKN 17.50, DIED 1831. 



"Francis Huber. by his investigations and re- 

 searches in apiculture, did more to promote this 

 science than all his predecessors who had em- 

 ployed themselves in the study of this interest- 

 ing insect. It is his discoveries alone that 

 marked that golden age in the histoi-y of api- 

 culture which is destined to remain for all ages. 

 Ruber's observations are not only of the great- 

 est importance in themselves, but wonderful for 

 the manner in which they were made ; for Hu- 

 ber was blind." 



Now, that is a strong statement, and yet I am 

 not ready to deny it in any particular; but how 

 are we to account for what seems to me to be a 

 fact, that, so far as honey is concerned, no ap- 

 parent increase in its production is noticed or 

 recorded in the fifty years after Ruber's works 

 were published, over the fifty years preceding 

 that event? That is, how much did he help 

 the producer of honey? Certainly his works 

 cleared the sky of most of the abominable su- 

 perstitions connected with the bee up to his 

 time, and after that the ground seemed cleared 

 off and leveled in anticipation of an edifice 

 which should endure as long as bees swarm. 

 But why does the scientific world make so much 

 of Ruber, and the bee-keeping world never 

 mention him except as an ornament? I do not 

 know that the name of Huber is now used by 

 any association of bee-men. or in connection 

 with any hive or frame now in vogue; and yet 

 the man and his works have occupied a place in 

 the literary world, the glory of which the lapse 

 of about a century has not dimmed : and as time 

 passes, the inquiring face of the blind philoso- 



pher will sink deeper and deeper into our affec- 

 tions, and cause us to rejoice that his inherit- 

 ance is (or will be some time) in a land 



" Brig'ht, brigiit as day " — 

 where eyes, if needed, will not be dimmed by 

 tears nor blindness. 



The fact is, there are two sides to this matter, 

 just as there are two blades to a pair of shears, 

 and each is the complement of the other; at 

 least, we will " play so," as friend Hasty once 

 put it about Virgil. The work performed by 

 Huber was, in the main, in reference to the bee 

 as such — its habits, social economy, methods of 

 propagation, etc. He covered a ground in this 

 respect far in advance of what the scientific 

 world then held, even if later writers have mod- 

 ified these conclusions in some of their minor 

 details. He spread a canvas on the frame, on 

 which a later genius put the picture which will 

 remain; but which of the two men deserves the 

 more credit is of no more account to me than it 

 is to determine whether the paper I write on is 

 of more consequence than the ink, or the ink 

 than the pen. The three are very convenient. 



I.ANGSTKOTII 



is the one who, doubtless, will always be men- 

 tioned as the complement of or successor to 

 Huber. Beginning his researches at about the 

 time Ruber died, he so enabled the bees to di- 

 rect their efforts that, within the memory of 

 nearly all of us, the production of honey has as- 

 sumed such proportions as to elicit the greatest 

 expressions of surprise in those parts of the 

 world where '"the good old way" still largely 

 prevails. Honey, in our country, has ceased to 

 be a luxury, in my opinion, on account of its 

 cheapness, although some do not so consider it. 

 From this we see that Huber determined the 

 thing itself, while Langstroth modified essen- 

 tially the surroundings. We see an analogy to 

 this when P'ranklin proved the identity of elec- 

 tricity and lightning. That was necessary; but 

 it remained for Morse to provide a medium for 

 the fiuid that now compresses the world within 

 the compass of a daily newspaper, and for oth- 

 ers to light our cities with it, draw cars, and 

 revolutionize the very framework of commerce. 

 If, then, the relation which a bee sustains to 

 the world may be so materially improved by 

 better surroundings, who shall say that a man's 

 conditions and environments do not materially 

 affect his usefulness as respects society at large? 

 A bee can never do any thing not peculiar to a 

 bee; in other words, within certain limits it 

 must •' act as built."' Huber largely determin- 

 ed those limits, while Langstroth gave the best 

 possible opportunity for the exercise of what 

 nature made. In a like manner, society should 

 provide the best facilities for the exercise of hu- 

 man action in a profitable channel, and dis- 

 courage, as much as possible, the wrong use of 

 human ability. A man is not "'built" until he 

 has, at the end of life, passed through this 

 channel. Life consists of '" being built." 



I have used the word " Langstroth " in a 

 rather comprehensive or generic senses above, 

 and I mean by it not only the Langstroth hive 

 and frame, pure and simple, but every modifica- 

 tion of either, or any hive whatever which has 

 been invented under the incitement of what 

 may be termed Langstrothism — a periud of 

 time which may be said, in general terms, to 

 reach from 18.53 to 1893. 



Although Ruber's works are not, I believe, 

 now in type, they may be easily obtained, espe- 

 cially in French, the language in which they 

 were written. They have been translated into 

 several languages;* but their real value, aside 



* 111 Gleanings for July 1st, 1884, will be found an 

 article of great interest, from the pen of Thos. Wm. 



