336 



GLEANINGS IN BEE (TLTURE. 



May 



two of bees, and bci-an studying- them under great 

 disadvantages, he at that time never having seen or 

 heard of a worlc on bee eultnie; and for the first 

 year of his pursuit ill this direetioii. the only pub- 

 lished work of the kind that came to his notice was 

 written l)y a man who doubted the exislenee of a 

 ()ueen-bee. After graduating at Vale College, lie 

 IJUrsued the study of theology, and was settled over 

 his Hist ehurch at Andover, Mass. His health be- 

 came ill a short time so much impaired that he was 

 obliged to give up his pastoral charge, and in 18311 he 

 reiiio\ed to (iiceiifleld, Mass., wliere for a few years 

 he was eiigageil in teaching. Kinding that outdoor 

 labor and exercisi-ol' some kind was absolutely nec- 

 essary, he devoted such time as he oould s|>are from 

 his duties as a teacher to his apiary, and carefully 

 \eriHed all the experiments of which he had read, 

 and entered into niaii>- of ids own. tor the purpose 

 of gaining such knowledge liy actual ol)servatioii as 

 might be useful to him or to bee-keepers in general. 

 The methods of management then in use wei-e not at 

 all satisfactory to him, and he was constantly en- 

 deavoring to de\ ise some way or means whereby 

 complete control of the wliolc interior of the hive 

 might be given him. He thoroughly tested bars and 

 slats, and even endeavored to make a practical use 

 of the leaf hive of Huber. This leaf hive, however, 

 was too clumsy (as any one may learn by attempt- 

 ing to use one) and he became almo.st discouraged at 

 the poor success he met with. At last the idea came 

 to him, that if bees will build comb on bars set on 

 top of the hive, why will they not build it in a frame 

 hung in the hiveV He tried this plan with fear and 

 trembling. Failure had been his lot so many times, 

 that he had hardly dared to hope for success with 

 this his new fancy. As we all know, this experiment 

 did succeed; and the result was, that in 1853 he intro- 

 duced the frame to the public; and so well was his 

 work matured, that the same style of frame he then 

 devised is now used moi-e largely than any other, in 

 the exact form he first devised it, and by the ablest 

 apiarists in the country. It will be needless to enter 

 into the many discouragements and groat opposition 

 with which he met in his endeavor to bring his frame 

 into general use. It has been introduced, and intro- 

 duced fully and completely; and such are its merits 

 that the Langstroth frame is now used where\er 

 bees are kept. 



By the term Langstroth frame, I do not mean 

 simply the original frame he devised, and which he 

 still advises; but do mean that all sectional movable 

 hanging frames, by whatever name they may be 

 known, arc Langstroth frames. 



It was the hanging, sectional, mo\ able-frame prin- 

 ciple, of which he was the inventor, and the so- 

 called " Gallup," " American," " Adair," or " Bing- 

 ham" frames (or, in fact, all hanging movable 

 frames) are Langstroth frames. 



As an inventor, the name L. L. Langstroth will 

 live as long as bees are kept, and generations yet 

 unborn will revere his memory. By means of his 

 powers of invention, and through his instrumentality 

 in putting that invention before the public, the api- 

 arist of to-day, with a few days' practice only, is 

 enabled to see and observe for himself all those mys- 

 teries of which Virgil has so beautifully sung, and 

 which the various writers of the past were only en- 

 abled to find out, as was Huber, by long years of pa- 

 tient labor, such were the difficulties that then sur- 

 rounded them. With the introduction of the frame, 

 ft new era began, and through its means bee culture 



has been raised from a business of insignificance to 

 one that is now barely sosond to any other. With 

 the old bo.\-hl\e, it was possilile to gain 35 lbs. 

 of surplus from a single colony in a season. When 

 we compare this with the average of l.")0 lbs. per col- 

 ony in many large apiaries, and with the 1000 lbs. 

 from a siiigh^ colony obtained by B. V. Oarroll, we 

 may well be led to assert, that Ke\-. L. L. Langstroth 

 is a great public bcMiefactor. 



Mr. Langstroth was not f)nly successful as an In- 

 ventor, but also as an author. His treatise on api- 

 culture, " The Hi\e and the Honey-bee," stands at 

 the head of all written works on the subject, and has 

 fairly earned the high distinct ion given it, of " the 

 classic of apiculture." 



Mr. Langstroth is now an old ami feeble man. His 

 health was imi)aire<l in earl>- youth Uy too close at- 

 tention to his studies, and now he is able to do but 

 little for himself. For a few months i)ast he has 

 lieen in lietter health than for some years, and we 

 hope his health will remain good, and he be spared 

 for many years ti) gi\e us, through the various bee- 

 journals, the matured thoughts of his ripened mind. 



Modest and unassuming in his manners, and con- 

 fi<ling as a child in the honesty of the world, he to- 

 day, instead of ha\ing reaped a fortune as the re- 

 sult of his valuable invention, is not worth a single 

 dollar. But for all this, he stands before the world 

 as one of Nature's noblemen, an honest man. He 

 has fairly and fully earned the proud title that all 

 bee-keepers, who know him, admit belongs to him, 

 — the prince of apiarists; the Huber of America. 



Foxboro, Mass. .7. E. PONtT. 



REVERSIBLE FRAMES. 



HEUDON'S "HKVEKSED " OPINION IN THE M.VTTElt. 



§IN('E I wrote my article for the April No. I 

 have slept, drempt, and laid awake over the 

 subject considerably; talked with friend 

 Vandervort and several others who have had 

 so much experience with bees that they can 

 almost tell exactly the result of an experiment be- 

 fore it is put to practice. I have been forced to 

 " reverse" some of my opinions, and 1 am now per- 

 suaded that Bro. Howes (see page 304) has got the 

 " bulge " on us all. 



Now, Bro. Boot, I want to bet you a cake of maple 

 sugar (a 5-ccut one), that if reversible frames come in- 

 to general use (audi almost believe they will), that the 

 plan of Bro. Hetherington's that you speak of, will 

 not be the best and the one generally used. It is 

 just what I advocated in my April, mistaken article; 

 that is, reversing the whole hive at once. Now. 

 Bro. Howes will soon learn that I was not poking 

 fun at him or Mr. Baldridge, for he will see that the 

 " Reversible Hive" presents attractions enough to 

 make it a competitor of the reversible fi-ame. But 

 in the end I am fully persuaded it will be left be- 

 hind in the race. 



Since my former article, 1 have made several re- 

 versible hives, which are now piled up in my waste- 

 room, and 1 suspect, after reading Bro. Root's 

 editoral, that one of them very nearly resembles 

 Bro. Hetherington's. It consists of a plain Sim- 

 plicity case into which we place S brood-frames 

 made on the same principle as is a common open 

 top and bottom all dovetailed section, the top and 

 bottom bars being ''i wide, while the end-bars are 

 P», and close fitting. The Simplicit,y cage being ?ii 



