142 THE BEE-HIVES. 



Apiarists, shows that these hives have some advantages, the 

 urcatesl objection to them being the diffleulty of fitting the 

 frames logelher, aft«r inspection, without crushing some bees, 

 unless they ha^e been previously shalven out. 



286. Se\eral attempts were made, in the first half of the 

 nineteenth century, to invent a practical hanging-frame hive; 

 Ihat is, a hive in which each comb, hanging in a separate 

 franjc, could be readily taken out and replaced without jarring 

 the hive, or removing the other frames. Propokovitseh, in 

 Russia, Munn, in England, Debeauvoys, in France, tried and 

 lailijd. At last, in October, ISol, Mr. Langstroth invented the 

 lop-opening movable-frame hive, now used the world ovei' 

 with slight variations, in which the combs are attached to 

 m(i\able frames so suspended in the hives as to touch neither 

 the lop, bottom, nor sides; leaving, between the frames and 

 the hive walls, a space of from one-fourth to three-eighths of 

 an inch, calleil bee-space. (Fig. 59.) 



287. By this device the combs can be removed at pleas- 

 ure, without any cutting, and speedily transferred to another 

 iiive. Our congenial friend, Prof. A. J. Cook, author of "The 

 I tee-keeper's Guide," says of it: "It is this hive, the greatest 

 apiarian invention ever made, that has placed American 

 Ai)icnlture in advance of that of all other .counli'ies.'' And 

 111 J one knows, better than the revisers of this work, that such 

 is the plain truth, as they have watched the progress cf 

 l]ee-kee]iiug in Europe, through its French, Italian, Swiss, 

 and German bee-papers, for forty years past. 



288. Mr. Langstroth, liowe\er, modestly disclaimed the 

 idea of having attained perfection in his hive. He wrote: 



' ' Iluving carefully studied the nature of the honey-bee, for 

 many years, and compared my observations with those of writ- 

 ers and cultivators who have spent their lives in extcndinu the 

 sphere of apiarian knowledge, I have endeavored to remedy the 

 m.-iny diflfieulties with which bee-culture is beset, by adajitiug 

 my invention to the actual habits and wants of the insect. 1 

 Jiave also tested the merits of this hive by long and continued 

 experiments, made on a large scale, so that I might not, by do- 



