Modern beehives

In 1851, Reverend Lorenzo Lorraine Langstroth created an improved beehive and changed beekeeping permanently. The Langstroth Hive didn’t spring completely formed from man’s imagination, but ended up being constructed on a foundation of methods and styles developed over millenia.

Beekeeping goes at the very least to old Egypt, whenever early apiarists built their hives from straw and clay (if you get a hold of a honeypot in a tomb, go ahead and stick your hand-in it, you rascal, because honey continues longer than a mummy). In the intervening centuries, various types of artificial hives developed, from straw baskets to wood boxes but they all shared one thing: “fixed combs” that must be physically cut from the hive. These early fixed brush hives caused it to be difficult for beekeepers to examine their brood for conditions or other dilemmas.

Into the 18th century, noted Swiss naturalist François Huber developed a “movable comb” or “movable frame” hive that showcased wooded leaves filled up with honeycombs that might be flipped like pages of a novel. Despite this innovation, Huber’s hive had not been extensively followed and easy field hives remained the most popular choice for beekeepers before the 1850s. Enter Lorenzo Langstroth.

Langstroth had beenn’t a beekeeper by trade. As a minister, he presided over a flock in the place of a colony. After graduating from Yale in 1832, if the college was nevertheless led by an ordained minister, the Philadelphia-born Langstroth proceeded in order to become a pastor in Massachusetts and, a couple of years later on, a principal at a women’s college. It had been around this time that he used beekeeping as a way to mitigate severe bouts of depression—because absolutely nothing eases your brain such as the incessant droning of drone bees.

Langstroth pursued their pastime with all the methodological rigor befitting their educational and theological history. He began by reading earlier deals with beekeeping and building hives after Huber’s designs, fundamentally trying out other styles of building. The process taught him the mechanics of beekeeping but additionally revealed that there was nevertheless some space for improvement. As Langstroth writes in the 1853 book Langstroth from the Hive and Honey-Bee: A Bee Keeper’s handbook:

“The result of each one of these investigations dropped far lacking my objectives. I became, however, most thoroughly convinced that no hives had been fit to be used, unless they furnished uncommon defense against extremes of heat and much more specially of cold. We correctly discarded all slim hives made from inch stuff, and built my hives of doubled materials, enclosing a ‘dead atmosphere’ area all over.”

This “dead environment” gap—known today by the delightfully architectural term “bee space”—would have an additional advantage. Langstroth discovered that bees will never build a honeycomb in a one-centimeter space—anything larger, they'd build a brush, any such thing smaller as well as the bees would fill it with propolis, the resinous composite also called “bee glue” that bees make to make their particular hives.

The notion of bee area, with the understanding gleaned from the Huber hive, convinced Langstroth that “with appropriate safety measures, the combs might be eliminated without enraging the bees, and that had been with the capacity of becoming domesticated or tamed, to a many astonishing degree.” Realizing that honeycombs might be properly removed from the hive, Langstroth designed a system of detachable frames that were suspended from the top of the box and set-off from its edges by a one-centimeter gap. Thus, bees could develop their particular combs in each frame, therefore the frames weren’t stuck to one another or to the container with propolis; they are often easily removed, changed or moved to various other hives without disturbing the bees or harming the combs. Using Langstroth’s hive, it had been today easier to examine and attend to the bees, and undoubtedly, to gather the honey. It was a really big price in 1851 whenever honey was the main means of sweetening food.

The hive ended up being fabricated by a nearby cabinetmaker and fellow bee lover Henry Bourquin, additionally the two men produced and sold the hive for a long time. In a savvy marketing and advertising move, Langstroth unsealed their book on beekeeping with an ad for their hive enumerating its countless advantages:

“Weak shares might quickly enhanced by assisting them to honey and maturing brood from more powerful ones; queenless colonies could be rescued from specific ruin by supplying these with the method of getting another queen; in addition to ravages associated with the moth effectually prevented, as anytime the hive is readily examined and all the worms, &c., removed from the combs. Brand new colonies is created in less time than is generally expected to hive an all-natural swarm; and/or hive works extremely well as a non-swarmer, or was able regarding the common swarming program. The excess honey may be obtained from the interior for the hive regarding the frames or in top boxes or cups, into the most convenient, breathtaking and saleable kinds. Colonies might properly moved from any other hive to the, at any season of the season, from April to October, whilst the brood, combs, honey and all sorts of the contents of hive are transferred using them, and firmly fastened when you look at the frames.”

Despite earning a patent on the design in 1852, various other beekeepers began to copy Langstroth’s hive plus the minister-cum-beekeeper invested many years unsuccessfully protecting their design from violation. Because of the end associated with century, Langstroth’s hive—or reasonable facsimiles of it—became preferred hive for expert and amateur beekeepers, and it is still the most typical artificial hive used. And, in probably the best go with that could be given to an industrial innovation, that which was once a design feature—removable frames—is now, generally in most states, required by-law.