Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee: A Bee Keeper's Manual

by L. L. Langstroth

In my hives as soon as the bees are shut up for Winter, they are most effectually protected against all atmospheric changes, and never desire to leave their hives until the entrances are again opened, on the return of suitable weather. Thus they pass the Winter in a state of almost absolute repose; they eat much less honey[12] than when wintered on the ordinary plan; a much smaller number die in the hives; none are lost upon the snow, and they are more healthy, and commence breeding much earlier than they do in the common hives. As some of the holes into the Protector are left open in Winter, any bee that is diseased and wishes to leave the hive can do so. Bees when diseased have a strange propensity to leave their hives, just as animals when sick seek to retreat from their companions; and in Summer such bees may often be seen forsaking their home to perish on the ground. If all egress from the hive in Winter is prevented, the diseased bees will not be able to comply with an instinct which urges them "To leave their country for their country's good."

54. It should possess all these requisites without being too costly for common bee-keepers, or too complicated to be constructed by any one who can handle simple tools: and they should be so combined that the result is a simple hive, which any one can manage who has ordinary intelligence on the subject of bees.

I suppose that the very natural conclusion from reading this long list of desirables, would be that no single hive can combine them all, without being exceedingly complicated and expensive. On the contrary, the simplicity and cheapness with which my hive secures all these results, is one of its most striking peculiarities, the attainment of which has cost me more study than all the other points besides. As far as the bees are concerned, they can work in this hive with even greater facility than in the simple old-fashioned box, as the frames are left rough by the saw, and thus give an admirable support to the bees when building their combs; and they can enter the spare honey boxes, with even more ease than if they were merely continuations of the main hive.

There are a few desirables to which my hive makes not the slightest pretensions! It promises no splendid results to those who purchase it, and yet are too ignorant, or too careless to be entrusted with the management of bees. In bee-keeping, as in other things, a man must first understand his business, and then proceed on the good old maxim, that "the hand of the diligent maketh rich."

It possesses no talismanic influence by which it can convert a bad situation for honey, into a good one; or give the Apiarian an abundant harvest whether the season is productive or otherwise.

It cannot enable the cultivator rapidly to multiply his stocks, and yet to secure, the same season, surplus honey from his bees. As well might the breeder of poultry pretend that he can, in the same year, both raise the greatest number of chickens, and sell the largest number of eggs.

Worse than all, it cannot furnish the many advantages enumerated, and yet be made in as little time, or quite as cheap as a hive which proves, in the end, to be a very dear bargain.

I have not constructed my hive in accordance with crude theories, or mere conjectures, and then insisted that the bees must flourish in such a fanciful contrivance; but I have studied, for many years, most carefully, the nature of the honey-bee; and have diligently compared my observations with those of writers and practical cultivators, who have spent their lives in extending the sphere of Apiarian knowledge; and as the result, have endeavored to adapt my hive to the actual wants and habits of the bee; and to remedy the many difficulties with which I have found its successful culture to be beset. And more than this, I have actually tested by experiments long continued and on a large scale, the merits of this hive, that I might not deceive both myself and others, and add another to the many useless contrivances which have deluded and disgusted a credulous public. I would, however, most earnestly repudiate all claims to having devised a "perfect bee-hive." Perfection can belong only to the works of the great Creator, to whose Omniscient eye, all causes and effects with all their relations, were present, when he spake, and from nothing formed the universe and all its glorious wonders. For man to stamp upon any of his own works, the label of perfection, is to show both his folly and presumption.

It must be confessed that the culture of bees is at a very low ebb in our country, when thousands can be induced to purchase hives which are in most glaring opposition not only to the true principles of Apiarian knowledge, but often, to the plainest dictates of simple common sense. Such have been the losses and disappointments of deluded purchasers, that it is no wonder that they turn from everything offered in the shape of a patent bee-hive, as a miserable humbug, if not a most bare-faced cheat.

I do not hesitate to say that those old-fashioned bee-keepers, who have most steadily refused to meddle with any novelties, and who have used hives of the very simplest construction, or at least such as are only one remove from the old straw hive, or wooden box, have, as a general thing, realized by far the largest profits in the management of bees. They have lost neither time, money nor bees, in the vain hope of obtaining any unusual results from hives, which, in the very nature of the case, can secure nothing really in advance of what can be accomplished by a simple box-hive with an upper chamber.