VOL. LVIII— NO. I I 



HAMILTON, ILL., NOVEMBER, 1918 



MONTHLY, $1.00 A YFAR 



ADVANTAGES OF LARGE HIVES 



A Discussion of the Principles of Commercial Honey Production 



BY C. P. DADANT 



THE discussion of this question 

 is called for, following an edi- 

 torial in Gleanings in Bee Cul- 

 ture for September, 1918, entitled 

 "Bigger Hives and Colonies." The 

 same number of Gleanings bears 

 upon its cover the picture of two 

 Langstroth-Jumbo hives tiered to 6 

 and 8 stories and kept from tipping 

 over by fence rails, with the legend, 

 "Rails to the Rescue." Readers of 

 the American Bee Journal, knowing 

 that its editors have, for years, been 

 favorable to large brood chambers, 

 asked for articles upon this subject. 



Charles Dadant became a supporter 

 of large hives, and a user of them on 

 an extensive scale, as early as 1868. 

 He had, however, noticed the advan- 

 tage of large brood chambers' long 

 before using them. He often related 

 the first intimation he had of the ad- 

 vantage of a large hive body. This 

 was when he purchased bees from a 

 box-hive beekeeper. The man had 

 one hive which had a capacity of 

 about 2 bushels. This was his oldest 

 colony. He refused to sell it. He 

 had owned it for over 30 years, and 

 although no particular care had been 

 taken of it, the same colony had lived 

 for that entire time. Other hives of 

 less capacity had died i.. winter or 

 had become weakened in bad seasons 

 until they were robbed, or lost by 

 moths, but this had come through 

 numerous trials and bad seasons 

 without mishap. 



A similar experience was later 

 given, in the American Bee Journal 

 of April 18, 1883, by Wm. Ashcom, of 

 Ligonier, Pa. He said: "On June 14. 

 1881, I d.ove a swarm, for a neigh- 

 bor, out of a box hive that was 60 

 years old; it had been put in the box 

 when it was new; and when I drove 

 the swarm, it was so rotten 1 could 

 hardly handle it; there were cracks 

 and holes from top to bottom; il 

 stood the hard winter of 1880-81, 



without any protection, and the bee? 

 were very strong in numbers when 1 

 drove the swarm. That beehive 

 would hold about 2 bushels." 



These might be considered acciden- 

 tal instances, were it not that the 

 theory of beekeeping confirms them 



When considering the subject ol 

 frames and hives, Chas. Dadant had 

 three teachers before him, Debeau- 

 voys as his former teacher in France, 

 and Langstroth and Quinby in the 



Moses Quinby. original champion of the large 

 frame 



United States. Debeauvoys had used 

 a square frame, about 12x12 inche;, 

 and Chas. Dadant followed his meth- 

 ods in this country. This was in 

 1864. A very short time after, having 

 learned the English language — with 

 which he was totally unacquainted — 

 through the use of newspapers and a 

 pocket dictionary, he read the "Mys- 

 teries of Beekeeping" of Quinby, and 

 a little later "The Hive and Honey 

 Bee," of Langstroth. 



Quinby's hive pleased him best. It 

 was away ahead of the Debeauvoys 

 invention. Besides, Quinby had just 

 been reported, in the "American Ag- 

 riculturist," as having harvested a 

 crop of 22,000 pounds of fine honey — ■ 

 a rare occurrence at that time — for 

 which he had obtained some 30 cents 

 per pound. This was enough to in- 

 duce a beginner to follow him. 



Quinby, in the book above men- 

 tioned, discusses the size of hives 

 and criticizes Bevan, an English au- 

 thor of an earlier date, for recom- 

 mending a hive of only 1,200 cubic 

 inches. After two pages of consid- 

 erations, he concludes that the best 

 size for box hives is a capacity of not 

 less than 2,000 cubic inches. Bee- 

 keeping was not far enough along, 

 then, for him to recommend the cast- 

 ing aside, entirely, of the box hive. 



But when he made his movable- 

 frame hive, Quinby gave it a much 

 larger capacity, 2,925 cubic inches. 

 However, some of this space was 

 taken up by the movable feature of 

 the frames, the bee space all around. 

 But his 8 movable frames, 11^4x18^2 

 inches, outside measure, gave a comb 

 surface of approximately 1.584 square 

 inches, or, for both sides of the comb, 

 3,168 square inches of cell surface. 



The original Langstroth hive, 10- 

 frame. on the other hand, being shal- 

 lower and shorter, supplied only 

 about 2,800 square inches of comb 

 surface. Nowhere in his book, how- 



