232 



would issue various devices have been constructed to warn the owner 

 or to prevent loss during his absence. Electric attachments and tele- 

 phone lines have been put up, adjusted entrances to confine queens, 

 traps to catch the latter, and decoy-hives have been used, and at last 

 •the automatic or self-hiver has been evolved after many experiments 

 and much thought on the part of apiarian inventors. Although the 

 self-hiver in its more perfected form has scarcely been subjected to a 

 thorough test it promises to do all that has been expected of it. But 

 it will not 



TAKE AWAY THE DESIRE TO SVi^ARM. 



This is exactly what Mr. H. P. Langdon, of East Constable, N. Y., 

 says he can do by the use of the non- swarming attachment invented by 

 him and now for the first time made public. Moreover, he keeps all of 

 the field force of his colonies storing surplus honey under the most favor- 

 able conditions as long as there is any honey to be obtained in field or 

 forest, and simplifies to such an extent the work of the apiary during 

 this portion of the year that he can attend to several times as many 

 colonies as under the old way. 



The immediate condition which incites a colony of bees to swarm has 

 been quite well recognized as its general prosperity — its populousness, 

 the abundance of honey secretion, and crowded condition^of the brood 

 combs, or, in general, such circumstances as favor the production of 

 surplus honey, especially surplus comb honey, and it has of course been 

 taken for granted that honey could not be secured if these conditions 

 were changed. E'or would it, without any knowledge of the system 

 proposed by Mr. Langdon, be easy for experienced bee-keepers to be- 

 lieve that all it proposes to do could be accomplished without much 



manipulation and perhaps also the 

 use of some complicated device. I 

 was, however, agreeably surprised 

 at the whole simplicity of Mr. Lang- 

 don's plan, when, in December last, 

 he made it known to me and sent 

 a non -s warmer for purposes of illus- 

 tration. And in answer to his re- 

 quest as to what I thought of it, I 

 wrote him at once that I was of the 

 opinion that he had made one of the 

 most valuable additions to the list 

 of apiarian inventions that had appeared for a long time — one that, after 

 the frame hive, would rank equal with or ahead of the honey-extractor 

 and comb-foundation machine. 



Mr. Langdon has applied for letters patent on his device in this and 

 other countries, and with the specifications as a basis, a copy of which 



Fig. 32. — Hive showing entrance (e) and hole 

 (h), corresponding to like apertures on back 

 of non-swarmer. 



