THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



Jan. 3, 



bees — is not as cruel and destructive as the brimstone method; 

 but it does not give as great results as the Gatinais metliod. 



The use of caps, or large boxes, in which the bees place 

 their surplus, was one step towards progress ; but the combs 

 had to be broken to be removed from the box. 



The invention of the movable frame, and of the honey- 

 extractor, has afforded bee-keepers the means of taking out of 

 the hives the combs loaded with honey, and of returning them 

 to the bees when empty, without damaging them, or injuring, 

 or killing a single bee. Every one of my readers undoubtedly 

 uses movable-frame hives and honey-extractors, but, to some 

 of them, the history of the invention of the honey-extractor 

 will, no doubt, be interesting. 



In 1860, a Major of the Austrian army — Von Hruschka — 

 who lived in Dolo, a village near Venice, Italy (at that time 

 Lombard}' and Venetia belonging to Austria), had a few colo- 

 nies of bees in his garden. One day, while examining the 

 hives, he gave his little son a piece of comb honey in a saucer, 

 to take to the house. The boy put the saucer in his school 

 basket, and, in play, whirled it around his head. Then 

 Uruschka noticed that the motion had forced the honey out 

 of the comb into the dish. Enlightened by this unexpected 

 experiment. Von Hruschka made a square tin box with a 

 quadrangular slanting bottom closed with a cork, and fur- 

 nished with a wire-gauze inside, to support the comb, and, 

 suspending it on an iron handle, he revolved it around his 

 head, as his son had done with the dish. (See Fig. 1 .) 



He soon, however, improved upon this slow method, and 

 invented a machine made of a wooden pillar supported by a 

 pyramidal frame of three wooden posts, and carrying a revolv- 

 ing horizontal cross-beam 12 feet in length, at the ends of 

 which two extracting boxes, or baskets, were fastened. This 

 machine was turned by two men, with ropes as motors, one of 

 these ropes winding around the vertical axis while the other 

 rope was being unwound. (See Fig. 2.) 



Although this extractor was very simple, it was too cum- 

 brous and expensive to manage. Hruschka then made an ex- 

 tractor, which was exhibited at the Paris Exposition of insects 

 In August, 1868, and another that was shown at the bee-keep- 

 ers' exhibit in Milan, Italy, in December of the same year. 

 These machines were both entered under the name of Angelo 

 Lessame, of Dolo, Venetia. They were made much like the 

 extractors of to-day, of a square basket covered with wire- 

 gauze and revolving inside of a tin can. They were small 

 machines, although made for four combs, for they had been 

 made for the frames of the standard German hives, the combs 



Fuj. 1. T)i€ First Honey-Extractors. Fig. 2. 



of which are only 10x10 inches. The basket was revolved by 

 two wheels, one at the middle, the other at the side, and con- 

 nected by an endless rope. (See Fig. 3.) 



The machine which was exhibited at Paris was sold to 

 Hamet, the founder and publisher of the bee-journal, L'Api- 

 culteur, for the small sum of So. 00. Hamet, who was not at 

 all a progressive man, did not buy the machine for use, but 

 only as a i-uriosity for his apiarian collection, and in mention- 

 ing this machine in his journal, he branded it as a "useless 

 toy." Little did he think of the future that awaited this ma- 



chine, in which he had no more faith than he had in the mov- 

 able-frame hives, the only superiority of which, he said, was 

 that they could be taken to pieces like a " puppet show." 



I have reasons to believe that the exhibitor of these first 

 extractors, Mr. Lessame, had bought the apiary and fixtures 

 of Major Von Hruschka ; for the latter, having resigned his 

 position in the Austrian army when Venetia was ceded to 

 Italy in 1866, sold his property in Dolo, and tried to earn a 

 living by building a largo hotel in Venice. Unfortunately, he 

 met with ill-success, and died in poverty, after a number of 



Fig. 3 — Hruschha's Honey-Extractor. 



years of sorrow and trouble. The unfortunate circumstances 

 of the after-life of this man, who had rendered so great a ser- 

 vice to the bee-keepers of the world, were not known until 

 several years after his death, for he was modest and unassum- 

 ing, and avoided speaking of his affairs. Had he taken a 

 patent on his invention, instead of leaving it to others, he 

 would have probably become rich. 



As soon as it was published in bee-papers, many bee-keep- 

 ers made use of the discovery, and manufactured centrifugal 

 extracting machines. Mr. Adair, of Kentucky, followed the 

 first idea of Hruschka, by making an extractor of two baskets 

 revolving around a central pivot. Later, extractors were 

 made in which the entire machine, including the can, revolved 



together. Hamilton, 111. 



(To be continued.) 



How Many Colonies of Bees Shall We Keep? 



By G. M. DOOLITTLE. 



In Peter Henderson's "Gardening for Profit," will be 

 fouud some statements of remarkable things done by those 

 who are making land produce the largest possible profits per 

 acre, and of late I have fell to wondering if a lesson could not 

 be drawn from it for many of us who think we are on the 

 right road to successful apiculture. 



There seems to be a growing tendency, of late, to multiply 

 our number of colonies, rather than to see how good results 

 can be obtained from a few. In other words, we are using 

 four acres of land, and expending more labor, to produce the 

 same results which these men of thrift, mentioned in Mr. 

 Henderson's work, achieve on their one acre. The question 

 which arises is. Can, or cannot, the bees be worked on the 

 same plan, so that 50 colonies will produce as good results, 

 with less labor, than is gotten from 200 worked in the way 

 many apiaries are worked ? I believe they can, and think 

 that the day is coming when one colony will be made to pro- 

 duce as good results as two are now doing, if they do not equal 

 four. 



All who have read those Australian reports of 800 to 



