o 
Ordinary observatory hive for showing a single comb and a set of sections as they 
appear in a regular hive. This form of glass hive is often on display in grocery win¬ 
dows where honey is for sale, or at fairs and expositions to illustrate the relation of 
combs to sections. 
OBSERVATORY HIVES.— The origin 
of hives with windows or transparent sides 
is lost in the mists of antiquity. In very 
ancient times pieces of transparent sub¬ 
stances such as horn, isinglass, mica, etc., 
were let into the sides of the hives that the 
work of the bees might be observed. Such 
windows, however, afforded but meager op¬ 
portunity for studying the behavior of the 
bees in the hive. The first approach to the 
modern type of observatory hive was in¬ 
vented by W. Mew of Easlington, Glouces¬ 
tershire, England, about 1650. This ap¬ 
pears to have been but little more than a 
hive with glass windows. At about the 
some time, John Thorley of Oxon, Eng¬ 
land, put bees in a bell glass and used bell 
glasses as surplus chambers on his hives. 
No practical advance was made from this 
until about 1730, when Reaumur the emi¬ 
nent French naturalist established a swarm 
between two panes of glass. These panes 
were so far apart that the bees could build 
two combs between them, hence much of 
the work of the bees and queen was hidden. 
Bonnet the Swiss naturalist recommended 
a hive with “doors” only so far apart as 
to permit. the bees to build one comb be¬ 
tween them; and Huber, about 1790, 
adopted this suggestion, and the result was 
the wonderful advance which he and his 
faithful assistants, his wife and his serv¬ 
ant Burnens, made in the knowledge of bee 
life. From that time until the present, lit¬ 
tle change has been made in observatory 
hives, except in so far as the use of mov- 
