218 THE BEE-MASTER OF WARRILOW 
and his imitators had realised the advantage of an 
expanding bee-hive, this was secured only by the 
process of ‘‘nadiring,’ or adding room below. 
Thus the upper part of Wren’s hive always 
contained the oldest and dirtiest combs, and as bees 
almost invariably carry their stores upwards, the 
production of clear, uncontaminated honey under 
this system was impossible. It remained for a 
Scotsman, Robert Kerr, of Stewarton, in Ayrshire, 
to perfect, some hundred and fifty years later, what 
Wren had so ingeniously begun. 
Whether Kerr—or ‘‘ Bee Robin,’”’ as he was called 
by his neighbours—ever saw or heard of hives on 
Sir Christopher Wren’s plan has never been 
ascertained. But plagiarism was in the air 
throughout those far-off times, and there is no 
reason to think Kerr better than his fellows. In 
any case, the ‘‘ Stewarton ’”’ hive, like Wren’s, was 
octagon in shape, and had several stories; but these 
stories were added above as well as below. By 
placing his empty boxes first underneath the 
original brood-chamber, to stimulate increase of 
population, and then, when the honey-flow began, 
placing more boxes above to receive the surplus 
honey, ‘‘ Bee Robin’’ succeeded in getting some 
wonderful harvests. His big supers, full of snow- 
white virgin honey-comb, were soon the talk of 
Glasgow, where he readily sold them. Imitators 
sprang up far and near, and it is only within the 
last twenty-five or thirty years that his hives can be 
said to have fallen into desuetude. 
But probably his success was due not more to his 
invention of the expanding honey-chamber than to 
two other important innovations which he effected 
