AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



EDITED AND PUBLISHED BY SAMUEL WAGNEK, WASHINGTON, D. C. 



AT TWO DOLLARS PER ANNUM, PAYABLE IN ADVANCE. 



Vol. VII. 



FEOK,TJAIiY, IST'S. 



No. 8. 



Editor of American Bee Journal : 



Please insert the article on movable frames from 

 December No. of Mr. Kinj^'s paper, so that my com- 

 ments upon it may be better understood by your 

 readers. 



MOVABLE PKAMES. 



Is Mr. Langstroth the Inventor ? 



" If Jlr. Langstroth is not the inventor, who is ?" 



Samitki. Wagner. 



It is not in a spirit of uukinducss that we enter 

 upon the discussion of this question. Messrs. Lang- 

 stroth, Wagner, Otis & Co., have been doiusj all they 

 could to injure us and our business, but we do not 

 want to retaliate. Other motives prompt us. The 

 state of public feeling ; the earnest solicitations of 

 numerous apiarians ; vindication of ourselves, and 

 duty to the beekeepers of America. Tliese are 

 some of the motives which prompt us to publish 

 these facts, and we think that our visit to Europe, 

 and the particular attention we have given this 

 whole year to the history of movable frame hives, 

 give us ability to do it understaudinglj% 



For centuries, the Grecians used bars in their hives, 

 similar to the narrow top-bars now used in movable- 

 comb hives, but Francois Huber, of Geneva, Switzer- 

 land, was probably the first inimitor of the present 

 style of movable frames. This was about three- 

 quarters of a century ago. 



Many different editions of HuJJjr's excellent book 

 on the honey bee have been printed in several cities 

 of Europe, all containing plates with engravings of 

 his hive. 



Huber first made an observation hive containing a 

 single comb, with glass on each side. As it was 

 difficult to winter bees in such a hive, he set several 

 side by side, retnoving all the glass except the panes 

 on the outside. The bars of these frames were too 

 wide for a single comb after removing the glass, 

 which led him to construct a hive with frames, having 

 bars about Ij inches wide, securing them together by 

 hinges. This was the regular Huber hive, but one 

 plate in his book shows narrow bars resting in rab- 

 bets in a case or hive with long screws like side bars 

 for elevating the comb, naturally suggesting wliat is 

 called the " bars and frames " in England, and 

 " movable frames" in this country and Germany. 



For nearly half a century, beekeepers advanced no 

 farther than the use of the Grecian bars, with honey 

 board and supers above, usually bell glasses in 

 Europe, because they are cheaper there than wooden 

 boxes with glass sides. Bevan and others placed one 

 hive upon another. It is a common remark in Eng- 



land that his book, " Bevan on the Honey Bee," has 

 furnished matter for most of the later works on the 

 subject, both in England and America. Rev. C. Cot- 

 ton, an able English writer, and author of " My Bee 

 Book," says, " A Reverend American author ob- 

 tained his frontispiece" — the queen surrounded by 

 workers — " from his book, but spoiled the engraving 

 by mistaking what he intended as the appearance of 

 the queen in the act of laying, for a representation of 

 the queen with her sting protruding " — a very unnatu- 

 ral occurrence. We confess we thought croakers 

 about similarity of names of papers came near 

 copying book titles, when we took up a book pub- 

 lished in Dublin, " Richardson on the Hive and 

 Honey Bee." Tliese works contain nearly the same 

 matter that is found in all the late works, and one 

 of them " The Beekeeper's .Manual," not only 

 describes and illustrates the use of honey boards and 

 supers or bell glasses, but also the use of the shallow 

 chamber, about which so much has been said of late, 



W. Augustus Munu, of Dover, England, was proba- 

 bly the first to invent narrow frames to be used within 

 a case or hive. He made his first hive with frames 

 in 1834. By 1843, he had taken out a patent in 

 Paris, France (for the hive had been in too general 

 use in England), and a friend using the hives had 

 described the same with an engraving in The Garden- 

 fj-'s Chronicle, a journal of large circulation, pub- 

 lished in London (bound volume for 1843, page 317). 

 This hive really embraced all the practical features of 

 the movable frames of to-day. The same was also 

 described in a pamphlet by Major Munn, in 1844, and 

 in the second edition, 1851, he describes the same 

 with triangular frames to lift out at the top. Hfe 

 descriptions, though brief, show that he was familiar 

 with supers, and that with his oblong frames he used 

 a honey board, the shallow chamber, and surplus 

 honey boxes above ; to all of which Major Munn has 

 made solemn oath, perfectly invalidating the pre- 

 tended claims of Mr. Langstroth. 



The Russian, Prokopovitsch, perhaps, should be 

 mentioned here, for he supplied the market at St. 

 Petersburg with thousands of pounds of honey in 

 frames, but his frames were not used in the breeding 

 apartment, and therefore do not invalidate Mr. 

 Langstrotli's claims, though his hive was described in 

 a pamphlet in 1841. 



We .shall next mention movable frames used in 

 France. M. De Beauvoys is the author of a series of 

 excellent works on bee-culture. In the secoiW edi- 

 tion, published in 1847, and the third in Paris, 1851, 

 he describes movable frames containing all the features 

 of the. most perfect frames now used in this country, 

 and we shall show by the description of the storifying 

 system, using boxes for surplus honey above the 

 breeding hive, that Mr. L.'s attempt to evade this 



