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 donc; 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 America, 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, after 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’s 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 HIVF, 
No sensible person who intends to devote himself to api- 
culture would think nowadays of beginning without first getting 
