112 AUSTRALASIAN 



ordinary person, and for the ordinary purposes of bee keeping. 

 After Huber's time the attention of apiarists was for many 

 years directed chiefly to improvements in straw skeps or in 

 wooden box-hives, in order to obtain the surplus honey in good 

 condition, and without the destruction of the bees ; and the 

 first great step in advance was made some sixty years after the 

 publication of Huber's discoveries, when the Rev. L. L. Lang- 

 stroth, of America, gave to the world the present simple form 

 of movable comb-hive. No doubt Langstroth was greatly 

 assisted, as he has himself informed us, by his knowledge of 

 what Huber had done ; and it is a remarkable coincidence, 

 that at the very same time he and another enthusiastic apiarist, 

 Dzierzon, in Germany — already noticed in Chapter I. — were, 

 unknown to each other, pursuing the same object, and that the 

 latter produced also in Germany, nearly simultaneously with 

 the former in A mer i ca > a movable comb-hive. The two inven- 

 tions were, however, quite independent, of each other ; and 

 although the grand principle of having the combs in movable 

 frames is common to both, still there is a very marked supe- 

 riority in the practical working out of the American one, and 

 it is quite certain that nothing like a simple and practicable 

 form of movable comb-hive had been invented or was known 

 anywhere outside of Germany, until that one was introduced. 

 Mr. Langstroth not only gave us a hive which, aiter the lapse 

 of so many years, stands pre-eminent at the present day, but 

 he also gave us his book, " The Hive and Honey Bee," which, 

 although now necessarily somewhat behind the times in the 

 practical work of the apiary, must always be of the greatest 

 value to the advanced bee-keeper, containing, as it does, a full 

 and interesting account of the writer'3 able researches in api- 

 culture. I shall always have a grateful remembrance of the 

 name of Langstroth, as I feel indebted to his work for my first 

 insight into the advanced system of bee culture, and for the 

 foundation of my present knowledge of the art. He has held 

 up Huber as the " Prince of Apiarians," and I think he may 

 himself be justly called the Huber of America. 



CHOICE OF A HIVE. 



No sensible person who intends to devote himself to api- 

 culture would think nowadays of beginning without first gettiiig 



