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

by L. L. Langstroth

Last Spring, I made one queen supply several hives with eggs, so as to keep them strong in numbers while they were constantly engaged in rearing a large number of spare queens. Two hives which I shall call A and B, were deprived at intervals of a week, each of its queen,[20] in order to induce them to raise a number of young sealed queens for the use of the Apiary. As soon as the queens in A, were of an age suitable to be removed, I took them away and gave the colony a fertile queen from another hive, C; as soon as she had laid a large number of eggs in the empty cells, I removed the queen cells now sealed over, from B, and gave them the loan of this fertile mother, until she had performed the same necessary office for them. By this time, the queen cells in C, were sealed over; these were now removed, and the queen restored; she had thus made one circuit, and laid a very large number of eggs in the two hives which were first deprived of their queens. After allowing her to replenish her own hive with eggs, I sent her out again on her perambulating mission, and by this new device was able to get an extraordinary number of young queens from the three hives, and at the same time to preserve their numbers from seriously diminishing. Two queens may in this way, be made in six hives to furnish all the supernumerary queens which will be wanted in quite a large Apiary.

It will be perfectly obvious to every intelligent and ingenious Apiarian, that the perfect control of the comb, is the soul of an entirely new system of practical management, and that it may be modified to suit the wants of all who wish to cultivate bees. Even the advocate of the old fashioned plan of killing the bees, can with one of my hives, destroy his faithful laborers, by shaking them into a tub of water, almost, if not quite as speedily as by setting them over a sulphur pit; while after the work of death is accomplished, his honey will be free from disgusting fumes, and all the labor of cutting it out of the hive, may be dispensed with.

I am now prepared to answer an objection which doubtless has been present in the minds of many, all the time that they have been reading the various processes on which I rely for the multiplication of colonies. A very large number of persons who keep bees, or who wish to keep them, are so much afraid of them that they object entirely even to natural swarming, because they are in danger of being stung in the process of hiving the bees. How are such persons to manage bees on my plan, which seems like bearding a lion in its very den! The truth is that some persons are so very timid, or suffer so dreadfully from the sting of a bee, that they are every way disqualified from having anything to do with them, and ought either to have no bees upon their premises, or to entrust the care of them to some suitable person. By managing bees according to the directions furnished in this treatise, almost any one can learn, by using a bee-dress, to superintend them, with very little risk; while those who are favorites with them, may dispense entirely with any protection. I find in short, that the risk of being stung is really diminished by the use of my hives; although it will be hard to convince those who have not seen them in use, that this can be so.

There is still another class who either keep bees or can be induced to keep them, and who are anxiously inquiring for some new hive or new plan by which, with little or no trouble, they may reap copious harvests of the precious nectar. This is emphatically the class to seize hold of every new device, and waste their time and money to fill the coffers of the ignorant or unprincipled. There never will be a "royal road" to profitable bee-keeping. If there is any branch of rural economy which more than all others demands care and experience, for its profitable management, it is the keeping of bees; and those who have a painful consciousness that the disposition to put off and neglect, was, so to speak, born in them, and has never been got out of them, will do well to let bees alone, unless they hope, by the study of their systematic industry, to reform evil habits which are well nigh incurable.

While I feel very sanguine that my system of management will be used extensively and very advantageously, by careful and skillful Apiarians, I know too much of the world to expect that it will, with the masses, very speedily supercede other methods, even if it were so absolutely perfect, as to admit of no possible improvement. I hope, however, that I may, without being charged with presumption, be permitted to put on record the prediction, that movable frames will in due season, be almost universally employed; and this, whether bees are allowed to swarm naturally, or are increased by artificial means, or are kept in hives in which they are not expected to swarm at all.

Note.—The very day on which I first contrived the plan, so perfectly simple, and yet so efficacious, of gaining the control of the combs by these frames, I not only foresaw all the consequences which would follow their adoption, but wrote as follows, in my Bee-Journal. "The use of these frames will, I am persuaded, give a new impulse to the easy and profitable management of bees; and will render the making of artificial swarms an easy operation."

CHAPTER XI.
THE BEE-MOTH, AND OTHER ENEMIES OF BEES. DISEASES OF BEES.

Of all the numerous enemies of the honey-bee, the Bee-Moth (Tinea mellonella,) in climates of hot Summers, is by far, the most to be dreaded. So wide spread and fatal have been its ravages in this country, that thousands have abandoned the cultivation of bees in despair, and in districts which once produced abundant supplies of the purest honey, bee-keeping has gradually dwindled down into a very insignificant pursuit. Contrivances almost without number, have been devised, to defend the bees against this invidious foe, but still it continues its desolating inroads, almost unchecked, laughing as it were to scorn, at all the so-called "moth-proof" hives, and turning many of the ingenious fixtures designed to entrap or exclude it, into actual aids and comforts in its nefarious designs.

I should feel but little confidence in being able to reinstate bee-keeping in our country, into a certain and profitable pursuit, if I could not show the Apiarian in what way he can safely bid defiance to the pestiferous assaults of this, his most implacable enemy. I have patiently studied its habits for years, and I am at length able to announce a system of management founded upon the peculiar construction of my hives, which will enable the careful bee-keeper to protect his colonies against the monster. The careful bee-keeper, I say: for to pretend that the careless one, can by any contrivance effect this, is "a snare and a delusion;" and no well-informed man, unless he is steeped to the very lips, in fraud and imposture, will ever claim to accomplish any thing of the kind. The bee-moth infects our Apiaries, just as weeds take possession of a fertile soil; and the negligent bee-keeper will find a "moth-proof" hive, when the sluggard finds a weed-proof soil, and I suspect not until a consummation so devoutly wished for by the slothful has arrived. Before explaining the means upon which I rely, to circumvent the moth, I will first give a brief description of its habits.