[For the American Bee Journal.]
The Thomas Hive.
Mr. Editor:—I wish, with your permission, to correct some few errors which have appeared in the Journal with regard to the Thomas hive in Canada.
Mr. J. H. Thomas, in the July number of the Journal, says—“It is the principal hive in use in Canada.” Again, in the correspondence of the Bee Journal, September No., page 71, Mr. H. Lipset says—“The Thomas hive is all the go in Ontario.” How is it that men will make such extravagant statements? Now for a few facts, as the bee-men say.
One of my neighbors, an intelligent and scientific bee-keeper, having been bred to the business, received a hive from Mr. Thomas, and after giving it four or five years’ trial, says he would not use the hives if he could get them for nothing.
A Mr. Conger, of this county, whose son was an agent for the Thomas hive, told me lately that he had thrown the Thomas hive aside, in favor of a hive similar to Langstroth’s shallow form.
Mr. Walter Taylor, of Fitzroy Harbor, Ontario, formerly an agent for the Thomas hive, wrote me last winter that he would get his bees out of the Thomas hive as soon as possible, as he had found the shallow Langstroth hive was “just the thing.”
I know of no person, making bee-keeping a “business,” who uses the Thomas hive. After all, the Canadian bee-keepers ought to feel proud of having a man among them who has produced the “best bee hive in America.” Where are Dr. Conklin, D. L. Adair, and J. M. Price with his revolvable, reversible—and so on to the end of the chapter? Echo answers—nowhere!
This has been a good year for bees in this part of Ontario. Yet a man living five miles from here, and using the Thomas hive, says it has been a very bad season.