1898 



GIvEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



683 



which they consider the proper size. With us 

 the ten-frame Langstroth hive is a small one ; 

 in fact, it is the smallest hive that we have 

 ever tried here ; and the hives we use, and ad- 

 vise others to use, are considerably larger. 



The discussion of this question of large 

 hives would properly belong to my father ; 

 but he has of late entirely given up writing, 

 owing to his age, SI. He used to write regu- 

 larly very long articles for the Revue Interna- 

 tionale d'Apicnlture, published in Switzer- 

 land, in the French language. These articles 

 also he has almost entirely discontinued, al- 

 though it is much less labor for him to write 

 French than English, as he did not learn one 

 word of English until he was 47 years old. 

 But, nevertheless, he is at my elbow, and oc- 

 casionally criticises what I write. 



When my father came to the United States, 

 in 1 86o, he had kept bees many years, but had 

 never seen a movable-frame hive with shallow 

 frames — the Debeauvo)'s hives, which he used 

 in Europe, having frames nearly square, like 

 those of the American hive of H. A. King. 

 These hives were not large — about the size of 

 the present ten-frame L. hive. The hives 

 mostly used in Europe, or in France at least, 

 at that time, were small straw (or box) hives. 

 The leading writers at that time were Debeau- 

 voys, whose system was ostracized by the prac- 

 tical bee-keeper, because his hive, although a 

 movable-frame one, was not practical, for the 

 frames fitted exactly in the box, without the 

 indispensable bee-space ; and L'Abbe Colin, a 

 box-hive bee keeper whose great ability as an 

 observer gave him quite a renown. The hive 

 that he recommended above all others was a 

 round straw hive, a print of which I send you. 



Its size was a trifle under 14 inches in diame- 

 ter, and its height 10 inches, and its capacity 

 was about the same as that of a six-frame 

 Langstroth hive. 



It was with this hive that bee culture was 

 conducted then, and was apparently success- 

 ful. An improvement that was recommended 

 by the above-named writer in his book, " L,e 

 Guide du Proprietaire d'Abeilles " (The Bee- 

 owner's Guide), consisted of ekes, or stories, 

 of the same style — three stories, or ekes, each 

 about 4 inches high, divided by slats, forming 

 one hive of a capacity of 1650 cubic inches, or 

 about 6% Langstroth combs. It would seem 



that the size of the hive has something to do 

 with the prolificness of the queen, R. L Tay- 

 lor to the contrary notwithstanding ; for as 

 Mr. Taylor, in one of his late articles, asserts, 

 not one queen in a hundred will lay 2500 eggs 

 daily, continuously, for a certain period. In 

 the same manner, L'Abbe Colin, who used 

 still smaller hives, says in his book : 



" We can not estimate at more than 600 the 

 number of eggs that the mother of a strong 

 colony can lay per day during the good sea- 

 son. April, May, and June are, for our coun- 

 tries (Northern France), the good season, the 

 time of the greatest breeding. During these 

 three months laying is not interrupted if there 

 is honey enough in store. ... A swarm 

 weighing 2500 grams (a little less than 6 lbs.), 

 contains about 23,000 workers ; but a swarm 

 of this great weight is rare." 



This same writer, speaking of the super, 

 says that it is useless to use a super of a capac- 

 ity of more than 7 kilograms (about 14 5^ lbs. ). 

 His supers also were of straw. This man also 

 speaks of large hives : 



" Some apiarists, using neither ekes nor su- 

 pers, have adopted a hive of great dimensions 

 [italics mine] with an interior capacity of 30 

 to 35 liters [1900 to 2100 cubic inches, about 

 the size of the brood-chamber of the eight- 

 frame L. hive]. This hive is not to be dis- 

 dained ; it does not swarm as readily as the 

 others, but, giving larger swarms, it preserves 

 an apiary in better condition than other hives. ' ' 



Please bear in mind that this writer was a 

 leader in France some forty years ago — in the 

 very country where they now use hives of a 

 capacity more than double the size he recom- 

 mended, and which was then thought to be 

 the only rational size. The work I quote from 

 was in its third edition in 1865, and is yet con- 

 sidered an authority on many points, for the 

 writer was as practical as a box-hive bee-keep- 

 er could possibly be. But probably he had 

 never tried any thing larger than the hive he 

 recommended ; or if he had, it was perhaps as 

 a "fad," and, as recommended by Hutchin- 

 son, " on a small scale " — too small for any 

 results. 



Before I go any further I wish the reader to 

 remember that I am not writing in favor of 

 large hives as a theory. We are using large 

 hives on a large scale ; we have been irsing 

 them for thirty odd years, and have discarded 

 the small hives only after long and persistent 

 trial of both kinds, in hundreds ; and our 

 small hives were the ten-frame Langstroth 

 hives of to-day. How this came about will be 

 the subject of another article. 



Hamilton, 111. 



[As stated at the outset by friend D., I re- 

 quested him to write a series of articles on the 

 subject of large hives from his standpoint, and 

 not to be afraid to go over old ground ; that, 

 while the subject might be stale to him, it was 

 not to others of us who have just begun to see 

 the light. 



It is a well-known fact that the Dadants 

 have for years run their series of out-apiaries 

 with little or no swarming ; and if I am cor- 

 rect they produce as much or more honey, 



