BEE-spoke-data/bees-v0 huggingface dataset:
Since that time there have been modifications of the hive, and it is now made in eight, ten, twelve, and sixteen frame sizes. The cover is made of six pieces. The body is locked at the corners, and the bottom-board is made in several styles. See Entrances.
The Hoffman self-spacing frame, described under Frames, Self' spacing, and Frames, Manipulating, is used in the Dovetailed hive almost exclusively. The usual width of the hive is eight-frame, although there seems to be a tendency toward the ten and twelve frame sizes. The supers for this hive are the same as those shown under Comb Honey.
As now constructed the hive embodies the very latest developments in hives and hive-construction. It can be handled rapidly, and is especially adapted for out-aplary work, where frequent moving from one field to another is necessary. It is standard, being made by all the supply-manufacturing concerns, and is for sale everywhere.
look corner is especially well adapted for hot climates : and for any place it is far superior to work depending on nails alone. The ordinary miter or halved joint is inclined to pull apart in parts of California, Texas. Florida, and other portions of our country subject to extremes of heat, or hot dry winds.
A very important requisite of a good hive is a good cover. While the flat cover--one making use of one flat board and two cleats --was a good one, yet, owing to the width of the single board, and increasing scarcity of such lumber, something made of two or three narrow boards had to be used. Accordingly, the Excelisior was devised. It consists of boards not exceeding 6 inches in width, for narrow boards will not shrink and check from the influence of the weather
by Mr. Bingham in 1867 brought out his hive with closed-end frames with a narrow top-bar, and no bottom-bar, but still embodying the chief features of Huber's hive of 1789. But the peculiar feature of this hive was that it made use of shallow frames only 5 inches deep, a series of them being lashed together by means of a wire loop and stretcher sticks, said loop drawing on the follower-boards in such a way as to bring tight compression on frames enclosed in manner shown. Seven of these brood frames in the present hive make up a brood-nest, and an entire brood-nest may consist of one or two sets of frames. The top-bar is dropped down from the top of the end-bars a bee-space, while the bottom-bars are flush with the bottoms of the end-bars. With a bottom-board having a \(\sharp\) in. strip on each side, the ordinary bee-space is preserved through the several divisions of the hive.
The super is like any ordinary one adapted to comb honey, except that it uses coiled springs to produce the necessary tension.
Although Mr. Bingham has used this hive for a great many years, and quite successfully too, no one else seems to have done much with it; but a modification of the hive is shown in the Danzenbaker and the Heddon, both of which, in some sections, have come to be favorites.
THE Danzenbaker hive, with closed-end frames, is one of the very best; certainly it is slowly working its way into the confidence of bee-keepers. It consists of a brood-chamber of the same length and width as the 10-frame Langstroth Dovetailed hive, but only deep enough to take in a depth of frame of 7\(\sharp\) in. The rablect, instead of being near the upper edge, is dropped down about midway; or, more strictly speaking, there is a cleat or board nailed on the inside of the ends of the hive, as shown at F F in the accompanying diagram of the hive. On this support hang the closed-end brood-frames, pivoted at the center of the end-bars by means of a rivet driven through from the inside, as shown at I in the diagram. Ten of these frames till the live; and when they are crowded together with a follower-board on the side, we have practically a double-walled hive--the ends of the frames with closed uprights forming one wall, and the ends of the hive the second or outer wall; the follower on one side wall, and the side of the hive the outside or secondary wall. These frames being pivoted in the center, as shown at C, can be reversed, and this feature, while it costs nothing, is something to be desired, as it enables us to have all frames filled solid with comb.
The bottom of these hives is the same as that shown for the Dovetailed, already described ; or, to be more exact, the Dovetailed hive has appropriated the bottom-board of the Danzenbaker. The super for comb honey takes in the 4x5 plain section, and makes use of the fence-separator system. The sections are supported in section-holders; indeed, the whole arrangement is the same as the section-holder super already described in Corn Honey.
This hive is especially adapted to the production of comb honey, and Mr. Danzenbaker prefers to use only one brood-chamber at a time, although in some localities it might be better to use two. The ordinary Langstroh frame is just deep enough to permit of the bees building from an inch to an inch and a half of honey over the brood in each frame. Mr. Danzenbaker makes his frame just enough shallower so that it will be almost solid with brood, and the honey that would otherwise be put in the brood-chamber is forced into the sections just where we want it, and where it will bring the highest' market price.
Its good wintering qualities.
Under Frames, Manipulating, will be found a description of how the frames of this particular hive may be handled without killing bees -- to this the reader is referred.
The Danzenbaker hive has recently been coming into prominence as one that seems to be especially adapted for wintering and springing bees. It is, to a great extent, double-walled, and the closed-end frames make the hive a warm one.
But the claims for good wintering and springing of the bees in this hive will apply with almost equal force to bees in the next hive to be described.
In having the hive divided in this way was to afford more rapid handling, and to accomplish contraction and expansion by simply taking from or adding to the brood part of the hive one or more sections. This divisible feature of the hive, according to its ad voxeles, enables them to handle _hives_ instead of _fronts_, to find the queen by shaking the bees out of one or both of the shallow sections. The horizontal bee-space through the center of the broad-nest is considered an advantage in wintering, in that the bees can move up and down and laterally through the combs.
I thank divisible-broad-chamber hive, Mr. J. E. Hand, of Birmingham, O., uses a hive embodying some of the basic principles of the Heddon, but with some improvements which, in his opinion, render it simpler, cheaper, and more practicable and workable.
In the first place, he simplified it
by making the broad-chamber of the same depth and general construction as the super for containing sections. In doing this, instead of making the broad-chamber deeper than the super, as did Mr. Heddon, he cheapened the hive by making each division or section of it one and the same thing in every respect. Instead of using thumb-screws, which will very often swell in damp weather so as to become immovable, making it impossible to remove the frames, he made one side of his super or brood-chamber with a removable follower-board, the same being secured in place with a pair of ordinary Van Deusen hive-clamps.
By consulting the engravings herewith one may readily understand the principle; but the removable follower-board is only three-fourths as wide as one side of the broad-chamber, the remaining space being taken up by a permanent wooden strip which securely holds the two ends and the sides in \(1\) osition.
The follower-board, as will be seen, is related on the inside; and on the opposite side are two super springs, just oposite the uprights of the brood-frames or section holets, as the case may i.e. When sections or frames are in place, the follower-board closes up the \(01\) o space, where it is secured in place by two Van Deusen claims that crowd it up against the broad-frames or sections which, in turn, bear against the springs. No matter what the weather conditions may be, the yielding springs will cause a pressure on the frames or sections, and yet allow removing them with the greatest of ease. The broad-frame is 41 inches deep by 173 long. The section-holders are the same size, containing 41 plain section with fences.
Mr. Hand finds it quite important to have the top and bottom bars of the broad-frames narrow, so that he may look through the comb surfaces. The ordinary wide thick bars would not answer for a live of this description. While it is possible to handle the fumes, and absolutely necessary under some conditions, he emphasizes the importance of handling hives, or brood-sections, rather, instead of individual frames, Ile says that practically all the necessary manipulations, even to the finding and catching of queens, can be accomplished without handling a single frame. Mr. F. J. Miller, of London, Ont., Canada; Louis H. Scholl, of New Bramuflels, Texas; J. E. Chambers, Vigo, Texas, and quite a number of others who use the divisible-broad-chamber hive, have so far demonstrated the feasibility of handling hives instead of frames that they claim they are able to dispense with from one to two men, doing all the work alone, because there is no handling of the frames, and little or no time lost in hunting for and catching the queen and clipping her wings.
The badant hive.
Almost the very opposite of the Heldon in principle and general construction is the Landau hive. While Mr. Heldon divides up the broad-chamber into one, two, or three separate portions, Mr. Dadant would have it all in one large complete whole. His frames are 18x11=that is to say, they have the Quinby dimensions, and he uses nine or ten to the hive. Such a hive has about the equivalent capacity of a twelve-frame Langstroth, regular depth. The ludants have always insisted that their ten-frame Quinbys, when compared with the ten-frame Langstroth, averaged up year after year, would give far better results, both in honey and in economy of labor. This opinion is not biased on the experience of two or three years, but on a period covering a good many years. The large hives, they claim, swarm less, produce more honey, and winter better. If we are correct they do not, at their homeyard at least, have to exceed two per cent of swarming, and this average has been maintained year after year. Apparently the colonies in these large hives have very little desire to swarm; but when they do swarm the swarms are enormous. In regard to this point, in an article that was published in _Gleanings in Bee Culture_, Nov. 1, 1898, C. P. Dadant says :
Don't understand me to say that, with large hives, you will have no swarms, for this is incorrect; but if you want to prevent swarming, to the greatest possible extent, you must, first of all, have large may need. Your eight-frame hive gives her too much room at once when it is doubled in size. If the season is a little cool, there is a chance of delaying the breeding by chilling the combs. The bees will then concentrate themselves upon the broad and keep it within narrow limits, for the queen will seldom go out of the cluster to lay.
As to the matter of wintering, these jumbo hives seem to offer exceptional advantages. Mr. Dadant, in one of his articles, says :
The facts upon which I lose my conclusion are those that we have seen under our own eyes, of better success in wintering the large deep-hive. We have thus stronger colonies for winter, which is in itself a great advantage, as the number of bees has much to do with their ability to keep warmand their ability to retain the best hus also much to do with their frequency consumption. A weak colony suffers much from the cold, and is compiled to eat more. But to me the greatest advantage of the deep large frame is the greater ease bees have in reaching the honey while preserving a more compact cluster.
Large hives; where and under what circumstances used.
The Dadants have a considerable following in their vicinity ; and in France the Dadant - Quinby has become almost the standard live. But it should be remembered that the Dadants are extracted - honey men ; and in France liquid honey has rather large hive, then, a good deal depends on the locality, and whether one proposes to run for comb or extracted honey.
The large hives non-warmeris.
There is one very important feature in favor of the Dadant hive, and, in fact, any large hive ; and that is, the reduction or almost entire control of swarming. There has been no satisfactory method proposed to accomplish this result with the single-story eight-frame Langstroth when run for the production of comb honey ; and a great many give up the problem, stating that it is better to let the bees swarm once, and thou s somehow afterward control the after-swarms, arguing that more actual comb fluency will be produced from the parent colony and its swarm than where other methods are employed. But if swarming is to be allowed, what is to be done at outyards? If an attendant has to be constantly on hand during the swarming part of the day, it means a big expense, and this might, in a poor season, balance the entire proceeds of the honey crop. If, on the other hand, swarms are allowed to go to the woods, then there is a loss. It is true that swarms will not escape if the queens' wings are clipped ; and to a very great extent clipping does prevent this waste.* But better-far better--is it to take away the desire for swarming altogether, _if_ it can be done. In the production of extracted honey, at least, the Dadants have demonstrated that, with their large hives, they have practical control of swarming, because their hives are so large that the bees and the queens rarely feel cramped for room. But Mr. Dadant argues that he would use large hives, even if he were running for _comb_ honey ; for with a division - bound he can reduce the broodance to any size desired. And then when he has a prolific queen that can fill a whole Quinby hive lie is that much ahead, because the colony has more working bees to its size than a smaller one; and there is no use in denying the fact that these jumbo colonies have a certain vion and energy--at day-after-day "'stick-to-it-iveness"--that we do not find in the smaller ones. personally we believe in large colonies; and we are hopeful that the time will soon come when we shall learn how to make these big colonies produce comb honey as well as, at the same time, remaining practically non-swarmers. At the present time (January, 1910) shallow hives, Langstroh or Dunzenbaker, have the general preference for comb honey throughout nearly all the territory in the northern portion of the country--the territory where the main honey supply is almost entirely from clover and basswood.
Large colonies in two-story eight-frame lansstroh hives.
We have experimented a little with two colonies in eight-frame Langstroh hives to meet one above another, raising brood in both bodies. When we have a good queen, such colonies in these double chambers grow to be tremendously strong, and they show less inclination to swarm--no sort of doubt about that; and, what is more, in a few instances we have placed comb-honey supers on top of these same colonies, and had them fill two and three supers. But in a majority of cases the colonies will not be strong enough to fill two stories and go into the supers besides; so, after getting the colonies up to good strength, and just at the approach of or during the honey-flow, we take away one story and place on one or two comb-honey supers. Such a large force of bees, of course, rush right into them; then if there is any honey in the fields the supers are filled and completed in short order. We have thus far succeeded in getting stronger colonies in this way than in a single eight-frame broad-nest alone. By thus breeding in double stories, and having prolific queens, or, perhaps, what may be better, working colonies on one eight-frame full-depth story, and one eight-frame half-depth story, we can get the bees into the sections at once. For particulars regarding this last, see the Barber plan spoken of under Cobb Honey.
Objections to large hives.
Their size renders them both heavy and unwieldy. They cost more money--about twice as much if made as shown in the engraving of the Dadant hive. It is difficult, in the first place, to get good clear lumber wide enough to make these deep hives; and then when they are made, and are full of bees and honey, it is not practical to move them about much. The Dadants, for instance, leave these large hives on their stands all summer and winter, both at the home and out yards. They find it more practical to do so. Even when wintered on their summer stands in single-walled hives, the loss, we understand, just about equals the slight increase they have in swarming.
These large frames are not nearly as easy to manipulate as the shallow Langstroh. It takes longer to get them out of the hive, and during the operation there is more danger of killing bees. The Dadants and others having the Quinby hive find it necessary to use another size that they call their shallow or half-depth frame, 5k1sk], for extracting. These are placed on top of the brood-nest, and are tiered up one, two, three, or four high. One is led to wonder why a compromise between a deep Quinby and these extracting - frames would not be better--a frame udapted for breeding as well as for extracting--as, for instance, one like the Langstroh; then when one wants a large
is nearly as light, and because, in our locality, we can leave the colonies in these hives winter and summer. There is no lugging into and out of the cellar; and after the colonies are fed up for winter the preparations for their long winter's sleep and housing are placed over and around the smaller hive, the space at the bottom edges between it and the inner hive being closed up with \(\hat{\mathbb{1}}\) inch cleats padded so as to fit the hive closely, as shown in the diagram. Packing material is then poured in and around the hive and out top, when the telescope cover is placed over the whole.
We formerly used wheat or out chart; but as we could not secure this readily we gradually began to use planer-shavings, which we can get more easily. These, we find, answer every purpose, and we now use them exclusivei. Forest leaves, if good and dry, would doubtless do just as well, and they have the advantage that they make the hive, when packed, lighter--that is, easier to lift and handle.
There are a great many who, having in use a large number of single-walled hives, prefer to winter on their summer stands, if that can be done. For such there has been devised a winter-case made of \(\hat{\mathbb{1}}\)-inch lumber, and just enough larger than the hive to be protected to give one or two inches of packing-space all around the hive. This is the regular double-walled hive pure and simple. If the locality is cold enough to warrant wintering in the cellar, we should, of course, use single-walled hives exclusively.
_OBSERVITY HIVES._
These are simply hives having glass slides and ends. They usually have only one comb, so that both sides as well as the ends of it can be readily examined. With more than one comb, the open can not be readily found. At exhibitions for the purpose of showing a full sized colony, an eight or ten comb glass hive is often shown, as well a the one-comb nucleus in glass. The super also has glass slides and ends so that the work of the bees on the combs in the see tions can be readily examined without opening the hive.
The hive shown in the illustration has a floor board and cover of wood. The corner-pasts are \(1\pm\) inches in diameter, having longitudinal saw-grooves at the proper angles to receive the glass--at the ends and also at the sides. The ends of the posts are reduced in diameter, thus leaving a shoulder. These shanks are then set down into holes borel in the floor-board at the right points. The glass is slipped into the grooves in the post, when the frames are supported on wire staples driven into the floor-board. It would not be practicable to use tin rabets in a hive with glas-s ends, so none are used. As the frames stand, they are secured together at the top so as to hold their position. Hoffman frames are prominently well adapted to this purpose.
An observatory hive having fresh lees put into it every week or two, and displayed in a window where honey is on sale, will do much to stimulate the demand for it. When shown at county fairs they are the means of eliciting a great amount of interest and questions. If the exhibitor hangs out his business card, giving prices of honey--genuine bees' honey--it will do much to help his trade. See Exhibitors.
## 6. HVES, Evolution of
Primitive hives were simply the trunks of trees in which bees were lodged, cut down, and carried wherever the beekeeper desired. This plan of bee-keeping is still practiced in some parts of Europe, and is common enough in Africa. The stingless-bee quiries of Smith American are made in this way.
The next step was to construct a cylinder resembling the trunk of a tree, either of wood or earthwave. In northern climates, straw came into use, but had to be fashioned in the shape of a bell to make it easy of construction. This is the kind of hive which was so highly praised by poets, probably because it was the le-st practical. It has the merits of extreme simplicity and cheapness. Usually it had cross-sticks added inside to keep the combs from falling down on critical occasions. See kneets.
Not all bee-keepers were satisfied with these hives; and as early as the 17th century some few began to cast about for something better. Della Rocca, who wrote a book on bees in the 18th century, mentions bur hives as in vogue in the islands of the Greican Archipelago, where he lived for many years. Such hives were known even to the ancient Greeks. They resembled large flower-pots with wooden bars on which the bees were to fasten their combs. The shape of the hive made it practically impossible to cause a breakdown of the combs except by heat.
The plan of a movable roof was another step in advance, as it gave the bee-keeper an opportunity to put on a super to hold the surplus honey where it should be, and remove the same at the end of the honey harvest.
Mewe, in Great Britain, constructed hives of wood on somewhat the same plan as early as 1652, and these were gradually improved by various inventors.
Figure 1.Huber's observation hive, showing how comis could be removed for study.from Cheshire.
of movable-comb frames instead of bars he would have solved the great problem of inventing a practical hive equal to all emergencies.
Prokopovitsch, a Russian, about 1835, invented and made in large numbers a movable-comb hive of great merit, Fig. 5. In his own aplaries, of which he had many, were over 300 of these hives in actual use. His pupils (for he established a school of bee-keeping) had many more in use. One of the features of this hive was the bee-space, provided by thin bars of wood on the back, sides, and ends of the hive-box.
It may be noted that his surplus frames bear considerable resemblance to our bee-way sections, and that his hives were dova-
Langstroh hive is the provision for a bee-space on all sides of the comb. This bee-space can not be less than one-sixth of an inch nor more than one-third. This alone was a great discovery, and placed Langstroh far above the mere inventor.
From his writings it is evident that Langstroh knew nothing about what others had done before him in this line; and it is apparent that his invention was the result of a very profound study of the bee and its habits. To some extent he was misled by others into thinking that the principle of the Langstroh live had been discovered by Dr. Dzierzon independently, whereas there is no manner of doubt that the German bee-keeper had no claim to the invention of the hanging movable comb, to say nothing of the bee-space and the movable roof, which are essential features of the live.
Langstoth's invention, accompanied by an excellent treatise on the art of keeping bees, created a revolution in lee-keeping in a short time, linking his name with that of Huber as the two founders of modern api-culture.
**HIVES, MANIPULATING,** See FIMES, to MANIPULATE.