52 



1HE AMERICAN BEE-KEEPER. 



Advantages of the Movable 



Frame Hive, Compared 



with the Old Box Hive. 



BY G. W. DEMAREE. 



Honey bees were handled in box 

 hives for thousands of years by the 

 more intelligent men of the ages 

 without acquiring any practical knowl- 

 edge of their natural history and 

 habits. A few persevering naturalists 

 by desecting the brood nests of bees 

 gained some interesting knowledge of 

 the natural history of bees, but the 

 knowledge thus obtained was not 

 sufficiently practical to be put to any 

 practical purpose in their manage- 

 ment. But after all the years of the 

 ages, and but a little more than a 

 quarter of a century ago, the Rev. 

 L. L. Langstroth introduced his mov- 

 able comb system, thereby making it 

 possible to examine the internal work- 

 ing of the home of the bees. Men's 

 eyes were opened and all things were 

 made plain to them, and the economy 

 of the bee's nsst became an " open 

 book." 



The writer of this article kept bees 

 in the best form of box hives for 

 many years before he ever saw inside 

 of a normal working bee's nest, and 

 well do I remember the light that 

 broke into my mind when when 1 first 

 began to manipulate the movable 

 frames of combs of a strong colony of 

 bees. In a short time I learned to 

 know the queen and to discover her 

 functions — the proud mother of a 

 commonwealth — worthy to be called 

 a " queen." The drones or male bees 

 became familiar, and their office was 

 discovered. The worker bees — dimin- 

 uated females, — the brood from the 

 eggs to the imago or adult bees in all 



their stages of development and 

 growtl) became familiarized to my ex- 

 panding mind. It was the opening of 

 a new natural world to my now stim- 

 ulated thirst for knowledge. What an 

 argument in favor of the utility of the 

 movable frame hive! It had done for 

 me in way of knowledge, in a short 

 time, what years had not accomplished. 

 Some bee-keepers advance the idea 

 that they can make bees profitable in 

 box hives as well as in movable frame 

 hives; that is, they can produce comb 

 honey over or on top of box hives. 

 We may admit this, if the box hive is 

 made to suit properly made section 

 cases, as a mere matter of storing 

 honey cannot differ much. Bee-hives 

 do not gather honey; the bees must do 

 this. The movable frame hive is 

 made for the convenience of the api- 

 arist, not exclusively for the bees. 

 The person who would change from 

 his box hives to the movable frame 

 hives under the impression that his 

 bees would gather more honey, has not 

 caught the true idea of bee culture. 

 The movable frame hive is superior to 

 the box hive because you can manip- 

 ulate the frames in any necessary 

 way; the latter you cannot. If I take 

 honey with the honey extractor, I 

 must have the combs in frames so I 

 can manipulate the combs. Sometimes 

 hives become queenless; I want a hive 

 that I can open and look through it 

 and rind out the condition of the bees. 

 Sometimes I want to take brood from 

 strong colonies to strengthen weak 

 ones, and I must have movable frames 

 to accomplish this. Frequently one 

 colony of bees has more honey than is 

 necessary to winter them, while an- 

 other is deficient in stores; the mov- 

 able frame enables me to help out one 



