MANUAL OF THE APlART. 281 



Munn's "Bevan on the Honey Bee." This hive, although a 

 possible improvement on the other, is costly, intricate, and 

 still very impracticable. In the price-list of J. Pettitt, Dover, 

 England, 1864, I find this hive priced at £3 3s., or about 

 $15.00. From the figure we learn that there were some wide 

 spaces about the frames. These would of course be filled 

 •with comb, and render the hives entirely unsuitable for com- 

 mon use. That this ^ hive lacked the essential requisites to 

 success is evident from words penned by the inventor in 1863 : 

 " The hive matters little if the pasturage is good." And it 

 is easy to see from the complex arrangement of the frames, 

 and the wide spaces about them, that as Mr. Munn said, 

 referring to his hive, " When left to themselves the bees shut 

 up the shop." Had invention stopped with Major Munn's 

 hive, we should to-day be using the old box hive, and sighing 

 in vain for a better. Neighbour well says (3d edition, p. 129) : 

 " Probably the reason of the invention's failure was the 

 expensiveness of the Major's fittings, which make the hive 

 appear more like some astronomical instrument, than a box 

 for bees. Be this as it may, there was no such thing as a 

 frame hive in use in England till 1860." 



It would seem strange, that after going so far Major Munn 

 should have failed to give bee-keepers a hive of value. Yet 

 with his view that smoke injured the bees and brood (2d edi- 

 tion, p. 21), we can readily see, that with his hive and black 

 bees, a man would need the skin of a rhinoceros, and nerves 

 of brass, to do much by way of actual manipulation for prac- 

 tical purposes. It has been truly said that " The Huber hive 

 can be used with far greater ease and safety, by a novice, than 

 can Munn's." 



It will be seen by reference to " Bee Culture with Movable 

 Erames," published by Pastor George Kleine, Hanover, G-er- 

 many, in 1853, p. 5, that a druggist by the name of Schmidt, 

 in a work which he published in Freiburg, in 1851, entitled, 

 "The New Bee Homes," describes a hive with the Huber 

 leaves having prolonged tops which hung on rabbets, much as 

 do our frames. These Huber leaves were close-fitting, and 

 so not practical. Kleine regarded this as inferior to the 

 Huber hive, in that the combs must be taken out from above. 

 With a side opening he thinks it would be a material improve- 



