Honeybee_ Lessons from an Accidental Beekeeper - C. Marina Marchese [18]
The Reverend Lorenzo Langstroth is known affectionately among beekeepers around the world as the father of beekeeping. In 1852, Langstroth’s innovative hive design revolutionized beekeeping with his use of removable frames that hang inside the hive box. They were loosely based upon a system invented by another beekeeper, a Ukrainian named Petr Prokopovich. These wooden frames on which honeybees build their comb are lined up in neat rows and are easily accessed by the beekeeper, who only has to open the top of the box and lift out a frame in order to inspect and manage the hive and collect the honey. In 1789, before Langstroth’s innovative design, Swiss inventor François Huber designed a hive that opened and closed like a book, with frames bound in like pages. It was called a Leaf Hive. But it was Langstroth’s discovery of bee space that brought beekeeping into the future.
WOVEN BEE SKEP
Langstroth wrote about this discovery in his 1853 book titled The Hive and the Honeybee. He discovered that if there was more than ⅜ inch of space anywhere within a hive, the bees would build comb in that gap, which he called bee space; if there was less than a ⅜-inch space, the bees would fill the gap with sticky propolis, making the beekeeper’s job of removing frames much more difficult. Langstroth’s hive design revolutionized beekeeping because it had movable frames, spaced not less than ⅜ inch apart, which addressed the concept of bee space. In 1859, a German named Johannes Mehring produced the first premade beeswax foundations for Langstroth’s frames. Embossed with a honeycomb pattern, these foundations gave honeybees a head start in building honeycomb. Then, in 1866, Austrian Franz von Hruschka, after observing milkmaids swinging buckets of milk in circles, invented the first device to extract honey from the comb using centrifugal force.
• • •
MY FIRST BEEHIVE ARRIVED THREE DAYS AFTER I ORDERED IT. When the delivery truck pulled into my driveway, I ran out to greet it like a kid runs to an ice cream truck. The hive came packed in two large, heavy boxes with charming illustrations of honeybees printed on the sides. I carried each box to my back patio. Using a box cutter, I meticulously sliced through the top of the first box where the seams met, and then unfolded each flap to expose the aroma of fresh pinewood and beeswax.
The precut wood was packed snugly with the galvanized nails. There were also twenty sheets of beeswax foundation, wrapped between cardboard for safety. The second box held the beekeeper’s tools of the trade. Wrapped in protective paper was a beekeeper’s hat. The hat was tan and resembled a woven safari helmet with a black mesh veil that protects the face and neck from curious honeybees, making visiting the honeybees seem like a religious experience. Also included in the second box was a white protective beekeeper’s jacket, which had a zipper around the neck to attach it to the veil, and the indispensable hive tool. The hive tool is primarily used to pry open hive lids that have become stuck shut with beeswax or propolis.
I also found a pair of beekeeper’s leather gloves that were long enough to reach my elbows. The last item I pulled out of the box was a smoker, which looks like large stainless steel can with bellows. Beekeepers light a small fire inside these canisters and squeeze the bellows to draw air into the flame. A few pieces of newspaper, dried leaves, and twigs can quickly transform a smoker into a fireplace, but beekeepers agree that keeping your smoker lit during an entire hive visit is possibly the most difficult part of beekeeping.
ASSEMBLING THE HIVE
A Langstroth beehive looks a lot like a wooden