AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



EDITED AND PUBLISHED BY SAMUEL WAGNER, WASHINGTON, D. 0. 



AT TWO DOLLARS PER ANNUM, PAYABLE IN ADVANCE. 



Vol. VIII. 



JULY, 187S. 



No. 1. 



[For the American Bee Journal.] 



Unedited Letters of Huber. 



January 20, 1801. 



Sir : — I have this moment received your let- 

 ter of the 10th. I will not reply to it now, but 

 wait until after I have received your promised 

 letter. I admire your skill in manipulations, 

 and your sagacity ; which gives me hope that 

 the history of the bee may be pursued further. 

 Study constantly the book of nature, it will 

 teach you more than all the romances that have 

 been written on the bee. You understand, Sir, 

 that this little memoir is only for your eye.* I 

 have counted upon your indulgence in writing 

 it, and do not wish it to go out of your hands, 

 as I hope someday to publish these observations. 

 I have the honor to be yours very devotedly — 



F. Huber. 



P. S. — I see by your letter that you have an- 

 ticipated the doing away with the bottom piece 

 of the frames of the leaf hive. It was only after 

 long experience that I felt the inconvenience of 

 full frames. The cross piece that I put in the 

 middle of the frames should be narrower than 

 the upright pieces. It may be an inch in breadth 

 and a quarter of an inch in thickness. 



To compel the bees to build their combs 

 parallel to the small side of the hive, it is not 

 sufficient to put a piece of comb in one of the 

 frames ; success is more surely attained by cut- 

 ting a clean old comb in pieces, six inches long 

 by one or two broad. Fasten the first piece 

 firmly in the top of the third frame ; the second in 

 the sixth ; the third in the ninth frame, &c. ; con- 

 tinue in this order if the hive have more than 

 ten frames. You must also put several pieces 

 of comb in the hives such I sent you a model of. 

 (Translated by Dr. Ehrick Parmley.) 



The first edition of Huber's work on bees 

 (Nouvelles observations sur les abnlles) was pub- 

 lished in 1702. It has plates which show very 

 clearly the construction of his hive. The tops 

 and bottoms of his frames (called by him leaves) 

 were about an inch and a quarter wide, and were 

 dovetailed to uprights of the same width, thus 

 making them close fitting, so that when put to- 



* This letter was at the close of the memoir we are 

 about to present. Haniet. 



gether they formed the hive, the ends being 

 closed with glass darkened by shutters. 



The second edition, edited by his son, was 

 published in 1820, and although it contains 

 much new matter, especially on the architecture 

 of bees, it uses the same cuts of the hive with 

 the first edition. But for these letters which 

 have so unexpectedly come to the knowledge of 

 the bee-world, we should never have known that 

 Huber made or even contemplated any changes 

 in the construction of his hives. In the June 

 No. of the Journal, his reasons for dispensing 

 with the hinging of his frames were given, and 

 now we find him discarding the bottom pieces 

 of his frames. To those who have no experi- 

 ence of the slow advances usually made in in- 

 ventions, it may appear almost unaccountable 

 that Huber did not, from the very start, see 

 how greatly the close fitting bottom strips im- 

 peded the manipulation of his frames. As no 

 smoke was used in pacifying the bees, nothing 

 but the indomitable courage and patience of a 

 Burnens was equal to the task of managing 

 such a hive.* 



The method employed by Huber of fastening 

 his guide combs by small pegs, was far inferior 

 to the subsequent device of securing them by mel- 

 ted wax, or a composition of melted rosin and 

 bees-wax. 



The Abbe Delia Rocco, whose work on bees in 

 three volumes ( Traite complet sur les abeilles) 

 was published in 1790, used at first methods still 

 ruder than those of Huber. His recommending 

 the placing of a sharp angled edge on the under 

 side of his bars would seem to be an anticipation, 

 in the date of publishment at least, of the device 

 of the celebrated English surgeon, John Hunters, 

 who in a memoir read in 1792 before the London 

 Royal Philosophical Society, advised the use of a 

 salient angle or bevelled edge, to induce bees to 

 build their combs in auy desired direction. 



L. L. LANG8TROTH. 



* In his preface, Hnber thus speaks of his assistant: 

 "It is impossible to form a just idea of the patience 

 and skill with which Burnens has carried out the ex- 

 periments, which I am about to describe. He has often 

 watched some of the working bees of our hives, which 

 we had reason to think fertile, for the space oftweDty- 

 four hours, without distraction, and, without taking 

 re6t or food, in order to surprise them at the moment 

 when they laid their eggs." 



