1909 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



705 



ALBERT J. KING. 



Sketch of the Life of one of the Pioneer 

 American Dee-keepers. 



BY \V. A. PRYAL. 



Among the names that shine brightly in 

 the small galaxy of pioneer bee-keepers, 

 none are more luminous than those of the 

 King brothers — Nelson H., Homer A., and 

 .\lbert J. King. The first mentioned was 

 long the bee-man of the trio; in fact, he 

 tended the bees on the old family home- 

 stead, and yet little was known of him, as 

 Homer was the active, energetic personage 

 of the firm. However, I shall devote this 

 sketch only to the last mentioned of these 

 three brothers. 



The coming of Langstroth's movable-frame 

 hive and his imperishable work on the honey- 

 bee and its management opened the gates to 

 the great bee-world that lay practically hid- 

 den up to that time. Perhaps the secret that 

 Langstroth unfolded would not long have re- 

 mained such, for there were other Americans 

 delving into the mysteries of bee-keeping; 

 and it is no more than justice to Yankee in- 

 genuity to say that their united labors would 

 soon have perfected the movable frame, 

 which had at some time previous to our great 

 apiarian inventor's completion of the mova- 

 ble frame, as we now know it, been in use 

 in rather crude form in portions of Europe, 

 as is well known. But, nevertheless, our 

 Langstroth was the first to perfect it, and to 

 him justly belongs the credit. But the work 

 of this remarkable apiarian inventor was 

 augmented very soon afterward, or almost 

 contemporaneously, by such men as Moses 

 Quinby, John S. Harbison, Homer A. King, 

 and several others. It has been contended 

 that some of the improvements brought out 

 by these men were infringements on the 

 Langstroth patents; but of this I know not, 

 nor IS it my province to enter into a contro- 

 versy that has long since been dead. It was 

 unfortunate that, in the latter sixties and 

 early seventies, there was some litigation 

 over the matter that was costly and unprof- 

 itable to all parties concerned, if I am not 

 mistaken. 



Albert J. King was a schoolteacher; but 

 during spare hours he helped his brothers 

 in their home apiary at Nevada, Ohio.* It 



* The above brintrs vividly to mind something that I 

 believe is not mentioned in the preface to our A B C of 

 Bee Culture. After catchinmhe truant swarm of bees 

 and locating them in the window of our factory, as I 

 have described. I ran across a copy of H. A. Kinjr's 

 " Bee-keeper's Textbook." As Nevada, Ohio, isonlya 

 short distance from Medina I made a trip to visit the 

 factor>' where H. A. King was at that time 'about 1865i 

 manufacturinK his " American " bee-hive. The facto- 

 ry was a sort of covered shed; but there were already 

 enouch orders for his new standard hives so that I 

 saw ifreat piles of beautiful smooth boards accurately 

 cut out. and men encrayed in nailint; them together. 

 There was a wheel in one side of the hive that could 

 be turned in different directions so as to facilitate arti- 

 ficial swarming. I had quite a little talk with Mr. 

 Kintr. and was so much taken up with the American 

 hive that I purchased the patent right for Medina Co. 

 Soon after I arrived home I set about making hives. I 

 think the only power we then had was a windmill. In 



ALBERT J. KING. 

 One of the old bee-journal editors of 35 years ago. 



was thus, through his association with his 

 brothers, that, a generation ago, he was one 

 of the best-known instructors in apiculture 



a little time, however, the irregularity of the wind 

 when it was most wanted annoyed us so much that a 

 Bookwalter steam-engine was installed. As the Amer- 

 ican hives required a good many very wide boards, I 

 hired a team and went to all the sawmills round about 

 Medina to find some wide seasoned lumber. Our 

 boys are preparing to give a picture of the old sawmill 

 where I found my first boards wide enough to make 

 bee-hives. These boards were poplar, or whitewood. 

 They annoyed me so much, however, by warping and 

 shrinking that our next installment was made of pine. 

 During that period I read " The Bee-keeper's Text- 

 book " over and over, and greedily devoured every 

 word, advertisements and all, in King's periodical. A 

 little later on I got Mr. Langstroth's book; but it was 

 not until I had gotten an apiary pretty well started 

 with nothing but American hives that I changed over 

 to the Langstroth hive and Langstroth frame. 



In my early articles for the American Bee Journal, 

 which I persuaded Samuel Wagner to recommence 

 (for it was slopped during the wari , I wrote up the ad- 

 vantages of the American hive; and I must confess 

 even now that friend King embodied in that hive some 

 very desirable features. I soon learned, however, 

 through the American Bee Journal, that by far the 

 largest number of hives in use by the successful and 

 progressive bee-keepers were of the Langstroth pat- 

 tern, and finally went to work and transferred all of 

 my apiary into Langstroth hives, cutting out the 

 combs and fitting them, as best I could, into Lang- 

 stroth frames. I afterward met one of the King broth- 

 ers out in the desert in Arizona, and had quite a visit 

 with him. Like many other bee keepers, friend King 

 was a good deal given to changing from one thing to 

 another. At the time I first went to Nevada, aside 

 from bee culture he was greatly taken up with some 

 new invention that was going to " revolutionize " 

 steam-engines. Mr. King got off on to something 

 else, and let his journal go down; and as I look back 

 it seems to me there were only a few who stuck to 

 bees and bee culture, day and night, winter and sum- 

 mer, through a long series of years, as did your old 

 friend A. I. Root. 



By the way, it just occurs to me that friend King has 

 the credit of establishing one of the first manufacto- 

 ries, if not the very first, devoted to making bee-hives 

 and nothina else.— A. I. R. 



