Ohio History Journal

LANGSTROTH, THE "BEE MAN" OF OXFORD

by OPHIA D. SMITH

 

A revolution in beekeeping began on a summer day in 1838

when Lorenzo Lorraine Langstroth saw a large glass globe filled

with honey on the parlor table of a friend. He was so fascinated

by the beautiful sight that he went with his friend to visit his bees

in an attic chamber. In a moment, all the intense curiosity of his

childhood and boyhood seemed to "burst into full flame." When he

went home that evening he took with him two stocks of bees in

ordinary box hives. With that small purchase he began his apiarian

career.

As a little boy, Lorenzo had worn out his trousers by too much

kneeling and crawling on graveled walks to observe the curious

habits of ants that he attracted by digging holes in the gravel and de-

positing therein bits of meat, bread crumbs, and dead flies. He had

no books on natural history to read, so he studied that subject at first

hand. An unsympathetic teacher punished him at school for put-

ting flies in paper cages. His parents had little patience with his

strange habits, but nothing stopped his observations of the insect

life about him.¹

Lorenzo's parents, John George Langstroth and Rebecca Amelia

Dunn Langstroth, lived at 106 South Front Street, not far from In-

dependence Hall, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Lorenzo was the

second child and the eldest son in a family of eight children. His

maternal grandmother, Elizabeth Lorraine Dunn, was a grand-

daughter of Count Louis Lorraine, a Huguenot, who had fled to

America after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes.²

In spite of his peculiar devotion to the study of insects, Lorenzo

made a good record in school. In preparatory school he became a

notable Latin scholar. He could translate Latin so readily that one

 

1 Langstroth's "Reminiscences," in Gleanings in Bee Culture, XX, 761-762, quoted

in Florence Naile, The Life of Langstroth (Ithaca, N.Y., 1942), 36.

2 Naile, Langstroth, 35.

3 Oxford Citizen, October 11, 1895.

147

• 1
 

148    OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

would think he was reading from an English book.³ He entered

Yale College as a freshman in the fall of 1827, before his seven-

teenth birthday, which fell on December 25. At Yale his fine scholar-

ship and excellent character won for him election to Phi Beta Kappa.

There was practically nothing in his course at Yale that pertained

to his lifework, but at that time he had no thought of becoming a

professional apiarist.

Langstroth was not particularly interested in religion until his

senior year. In that year, under the influence of a fellow student,

he decided to study for the ministry. In the fall of 1831, he entered

the Yale divinity school. To provide funds for his education, he

taught in one or another female school in New Haven. For two

years (1834-36), he was tutor in mathematics to the freshman class

at Yale.

Early in 1836, while still a tutor at Yale, Langstroth was called

to the pastorate of the South Church in Andover, Massachusetts.

The parish was large, and the young minister found his duties too

strenuous. At the end of two years, he resigned on account of a

strange nervous condition that from time to time made him unable

to perform his pastoral duties. It was while he was in Andover that

he began to keep bees and to study their habits.⁴

In the meantime, Langstroth had married Anne Tucker, of New

Haven, who was teaching with her mother in a girls' school in New

Haven. After resigning his pastorate, he became principal of Abbot

Academy at Andover. At the end of six months, his health failed

again. In the spring of 1840, he became principal of a girls' school

at Greenfield, Massachusetts, and removed his family to that town.

In addition to his teaching, he supplied the pulpit of the Second

Congregational Church for two years. From 1843 to 1848 he served

as pastor of the church. A fine portrait of Langstroth hangs in the

office of that church today.⁵

About the first thing Langstroth bought in Greenfield was a

stock of bees in a section of a hollow log. While in Greenfield, he

gradually increased the number of his colonies.

 

4 Naile, Langstroth, 41-53.

5 Ibid., 53-62; letter by F. N. Thompson, dated Greenfield, December 17, 1939,

in Springfield (Mass.) Republican.

• 2
 

LORENZO L. LANGSTROTH                 149

In 1848, ill health again forced Langstroth to resign his pas-

torate. Again he turned to teaching. He removed to Philadelphia

where he became principal of a school for young ladies. Here he

remained until 1852.⁶

Langstroth continued his careful study of bees in Philadelphia.

When he had made his start in Andover, he had only his schoolboy's

Virgil and a small book written by a man who doubted the existence

of a queen bee. While in Greenfield, he acquired the Letters of

Francois Huber, the blind apiarist of Switzerland, and Bevan's

Treatise of the Honeybee (London, 1838). He bought a Huber

hive, which was a "leaf" hive that stood on end and could be opened

like a book, each "leaf" exposing the surface of a comb. Langstroth

made a number of these leaf hives and some of the Bevan hives, in

which the combs were suspended from movable bars. After much

futile experimentation, Langstroth used the Huber hive only as an

observation hive.

The more Langstroth read, the more questions he found un-

answered. Beekeeping seemed to have changed little since the time

of the ancient Greeks. What was needed was a hive that would per-

mit inspection without disturbing the bees, and which would permit

the removal of the combs without waste of honey and without injury

to the bees. Bar hives allowed the bees to suspend a comb from each

bar, and the use of "wings" kept the combs separated. Bars and

wings, however, were not new, dating back to colonial times, and

even to ancient times. Huber had outlined the biology of bees, and

Jan Dzierzon of Silesia, a German-speaking Pole, had formulated

the theory of parthenogenesis.⁷

Langstroth was trying to improve the Bevan bar hive. While it

had the advantage of each bar holding a separate comb, these combs

could not be removed readily, being glued by the bees to the walls of

the hive. Concentration upon this grave defect led to the discovery

that made Langstroth famous.

In 1848, in Philadelphia, at Chestnut and Schuylkill streets,

Langstroth had a house with a second-story veranda and several

 

6 See Dictionary of American Biography, X, 598-599.

7 Kent L. Pellett, "The Father of Movable Frames," in American Bee Journal,

LXVIII (1928), 509-510, 556-557, 569.

• 3
 

150    OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

spare attic rooms. There he established his apiary; but a year later

he removed it to West Philadelphia, two miles away. In the summer

of 1851, he discovered that bees could be made to work in a glass

hive, exposed to the full light of day. This glass hive led to an

acquaintance with the Reverend Mr. Berg of Philadelphia, who told

Langstroth about a Prussian clergyman named Dzierzon, who was

attracting the attention of the rulers of Europe by his discoveries in

the management of bees. Berg was astonished at the wonderful sim-

ilarity between Langstroth's and Dzierzon's methods of management,

neither of the men having any knowledge of the labors of the other.⁸

In the same year, he received first prize from the Philadelphia

Horticultural Society for his specimens of comb honey in glass. To

obtain perfect combs for market, beekeepers placed glass tumblers

upside down in upper boxes ("supers") directly over holes cut to

permit the bees from the hive to store surplus honey in those re-

ceptacles. Such a device provided a "fancy" article for the market.

Seeking to improve the Bevan hive, Langstroth discovered a

means of removing the cover of the hive with ease. No matter how

snugly the cover might fit, the bees always found crevices to fill

with propolis ("bee glue"), thus gluing the cover down tightly. By

simply lowering the bars, to which the combs were attached by

about three-eighths of an inch from the top, Langstroth made the im-

portant discovery that the bees left open that space at the top of the

hive, using it as a passageway. A smaller space the bees would fill

with propolis; a larger space they would fill with comb.⁹

On the afternoon of October 30, 1851, Langstroth was return-

ing home from his apiary in West Philadelphia, pondering the prob-

lem of how to eliminate the necessity of cutting the combs loose

from the walls of the hives. Jan Dzierzon had invented a hive with

combs on movable bars, which he could manipulate successfully,

but beekeepers less skillful could not use it, because the combs had

to be cut loose from the sides of the hive before they could be re-

moved. The Dzierzon hive as well as all other movable-frame hives

up to this time had been abandoned by disgusted beekeepers. It was

this problem that Langstroth had long been trying to solve. Sud-

 

8 L. L. Langstroth, A Practical Treatise on the Hive and Honey-Bee (Philadelphia,

1875), 16.

9 Naile, Langstroth, 71-74.

• 4
 

LORENZO L. LANGSTROTH                 151

 

denly, the obvious solution came to him. There, in his mind, was

the Langstroth movable-frame beehive! The movable frames sus-

pended with a bee space between them, a bee space between the

frames and the hive walls, a bee space between frames and bottom

board as well as the cover on top-that was the vision that revolu-

tionized beekeeping. There on the street, Langstroth could hardly

refrain from shouting "Eureka," so happy was he as he visualized

the new hive. That very night he entered a complete description

with sketches of the improved hive in his journal.

The advantages of the new hive were manifold. The honey

could be removed with the comb intact; the combs could be removed

for inspection or cleaning without disturbing the bees; and artificial

swarms could be made with ease, now that the queen could be re-

moved without injuring or irritating the bees. Beekeepers could now

produce enough honey to make bees profitable.

About a month later, on November 25, Langstroth wrote down

the great advantages of his new hive:

(1) The scientific beekeeper could examine every comb quickly

and easily. The Huber hive was expensive and the removal of the

combs was tedious and difficult. The Langstroth hive would be

cheap, and the combs could be removed with safety to the bees;

(2) The practical beekeeper, who wished an income from his

bees, could propagate queens, make artificial swarms, supply desti-

tute hives with honey or brood, and produce honey ready for the

market in boxes or in glass tumblers, and he could protect his hives

against the bee moth. In short, he could do almost anything he

wanted to do with his bees;

(3) The farmer could easily procure honey for his own use.

Entries in Langstroth's journal show definitely that he had fully

developed the idea of the movable-frame hive before the year 1851

ended.

Early in the spring of 1852, he increased the number of his

colonies and removed all of his bees to his West Philadelphia apiary.

He had a skillful cabinetmaker, Henry Bourquin, who loved bees, to

make the new hives. The old bar hives were converted into mov-

able-frame hives by simply nailing uprights and bottom strips in

• 5
 

152     OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

place to provide a bee space all around the frames containing the

combs.    As Langstroth     manipulated   the frames-removing       the

combs, shaking the bees from them, and changing the position of the

frames-Henry Bourquin fairly shouted to "Friend Lorenzo" that

he (Langstroth) had not made an invention but "a perfect revolu-

tion in beekeeping."¹⁰

Langstroth set forth his claims in the press in 1852, summar-

izing them by saying:

I claim, first, the use of a shallow chamber, substantially as described,

in combination with a perforated cover, for enlarging or diminishing at will

the size and number of the spare honey receptacles.

Second, the use of the movable frames, or their equivalents, substanti-

ally as described; also their use in combination with the shallow chamber,

with or without my arrangement for spare honey receptacles.

Third, a divider, substantially as described; in combination with a mov-

able cover, allowing the divider to be inserted from above between the ranges

of comb.

Fourth, the use of the double glass sides in a single frame, substantially

as set forth.

Fifth, the construction of the trap, for excluding moths and catching

worms, so arranged as to increase or diminish at will the size of the entrance

for bees, substantially in the manner set forth.11

During the summer of 1852, Langstroth had more than a hun-

dred movable-frame hives made, some of which he sold with the

patent right whenever the patent should be issued. Most of the hives,

however, were used in Langstroth's own apiary.

Late in the summer, the old nervous disorder returned. Under

this affliction he was forced to sell his bees. By November, how-

ever, he was well again and had secured his patent.

On account of the uncertainty of his health, he returned to

Greenfield, Massachusetts. There he secured the capital to intro-

duce his new hive, by giving Doctor Joseph Beals, a Greenfield

dentist and a former parishioner of Langstroth's, a half-interest in

 

10 See Naile, Langstroth, chap. V. In a manuscript compilation of facts after a

research trip to Oxford more than twenty years ago, Florence Naile quoted E. R. Root

as saying: "Imagine, if you can, all the frames in all the hives of bees suddenly be-

coming immovably fixed, never to be taken out again except as they were cut out, and

you will have a fair idea of what beekeeping had been through all the centuries until

the days of Langstroth."

11 See Ohio Cultivator, VIII (1852), 357.

• 6
 

LORENZO L. LANGSTROTH                 153

his patent. In Greenfield, he began to write his famous manual for

apiarists, Langstroth on the Honey-bee, which was the first of his

contributions to the literature of beekeeping. Langstroth's book

eventually led to the beginning of apicultural journalism in

America.

Jan Dzierzon of Silesia had published his work on the theory

and practice of beekeeping in 1848. Samuel Wagner of York,

Pennsylvania, an intelligent student of bee culture, had translated it

into English and was about to publish it when he became acquainted

with Langstroth. When Wagner saw Langstroth's new hives, he

gave up the publication of the Dzierzon translation and urged

Langstroth to write a book on beekeeping, for he was convinced that

Langstroth could do more for beekeeping in America than any

foreign writer could.

It was a bold venture for a poverty-stricken man with uncertain

health to embark upon such an uncharted sea. But he went to

Greenfield in November 1852 to live with one of his sisters, Mrs.

Almon Brainerd. His wife and two daughters remained in Philadel-

phia, where Mrs. Langstroth taught in a girls' school. For six years,

Langstroth lived with his sister and her husband. During most of

that time he supplied the pulpit of the Congregational church at

Colrain, near Greenfield. In summer vacations, Langstroth was

joined by his wife and two daughters at Colrain. Their son James

lived with a family on a nearby farm. As soon as Langstroth was

settled in Greenfield, he began to write, sending the sheets, a few at a

time, to his wife in Philadelphia to be transcribed into legible copy

for the printer. Within a few months the book was completed. His

brother-in-law advanced the money for a small edition, which was

published in May 1853 by Hopkins, Bridgman & Company of

Northampton, Massachusetts. The book was printed in Greenfield.¹²

Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-bee, a Bee Keeper's

Manual was the first American work on the physiology and habits

of the honeybee and the principles of its culture. Never before had

this information been available in the English language. It was de-

lightful to read, and it was practical and explicit in its instructions.

Most of its advice is as good today as it was in 1853. A revised

12 See Naile, Langstroth, chap. VI.

• 7
 

154    OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

edition was brought out in 1857. In 1859, the J. B. Lippincott Com-

pany of Philadelphia published a third edition. New printings were

made from time to time without further revision. Langstroth's

health would not permit frequent revision. Finally, in the 1880's, he

undertook, with Charles and Camille Dadant13 to prepare a new

edition. Langstroth's health was so poor, however, that the Dadants

finally took complete responsibility for the revision and publication.

This edition came out in 1889, and the Dadants sponsored several

subsequent editions. The book has been translated into the French,

Russian, Spanish, Italian, and Polish languages.l⁴  It made great

beekeepers like Moses Quinby and Amos Ives Root.

In 1854, Langstroth began to write for the American Agricultur-

ist. He later contributed to the Country Gentleman, Wagner's

American Bee Journal, and to Amos Ives Root's Gleanings in Bee

Culture. In 1874, arrangements were made for Langstroth's articles

to run in the Journal and the Gleanings at the same time. Langs-

troth wrote in a lively style that made scientific facts as fascinating

as fiction. He knew and loved his bees so well that he wrote of them

as if they had the impulses and reactions of men. His essay on the

"poor slandered Drone," for instance, allows the drone to present a

highly humorous but logical defense against the accusation of gen-

eral laziness and lack of character. There is a chuckle in every

line. He enriched his writings with his wide acquaintance with the

classics, with his keen insight into the human heart, and with an

unusually fertile imagination. His scientific writings bore the im-

print of a scholar, a Christian minister, and a gentleman in the finest

sense of the word.

In 1858, Langstroth removed with his family to Oxford, Ohio.

He brought with him his widowed mother, Rebecca Dunn Langstroth.

Oxford was the seat of the Miami University, the Western Female

Seminary, the Oxford Female Institute, and the Oxford Female Col-

lege. It was called the classic village, and its society must have been

peculiarly congenial to Langstroth. Soon after he arrived, the

 

13 Charles Dadant was a highly successful apiarist in Hamilton, Illinois. He wrote

for bee journals in France before coming to the United States, and continued to write

for them after he established his apiary in Hamilton. He took up the cudgels for the

American way of apiculture, which, of course, was based on Langstroth's hive and

writings. Charles and his son Camille finally acquired Samuel Wagner's American Bee

Journal in 1912.

14 Naile, Langstroth, 93, fn.

• 8
 

LORENZO L. LANGSTROTH                 155

Presbyterian minister, the Reverend Edward W. Root, resigned his

pastorate and wished to sell his new house. One of Langstroth's

brothers-in-law, Aurelius B. Hull, bought the comfortable eight-

room brick house with ten acres of land and gave it to Langstroth.

The house is now owned by the Western College for Women (the

Western Female Seminary) and is called Langstroth Cottage. Here

Lorenzo L. Langstroth established an apiary in partnership with his

young son James. He employed local cabinetmakers, Samuel Gath

and his son Harry, to make his hives.

Around his house, he planted apple trees, for apple blossoms

are especially fine for honey. Along the turnpike that ran past his

house, Langstroth planted linden trees for his bees. A few of those

trees stand along that highway today, and when the lindens bloom,

their fragrance brings to mind the gentle beekeeper who once walked

in their shade. Langstroth devoted an acre of ground to a formal

garden planted with flowers that the bees loved best, the box-bordered

beds primly divided by narrow walks. North of the house was a

clover field, and nearby a field of buckwheat for the delectation of

his bees.

Nevertheless, with all this lavish bloom, the bees roamed far

from home in search of pollen and nectar. From the wild flowers

and trees of the campus and outlying fields, the bees came winging

home with heavily laden honey sacs and pollen baskets.

In those Calvinistic days, children feared their elders, and a

minister was usually a man of awesome rectitude. But not one child

was afraid of dear "Father Langstroth." Little folk capered with glee

at his approach. If Father Langstroth chanced to lead in family

prayer, they dared to peep through their fingers and speculate upon

what the capacious pockets of his linen duster might contain-a

bright bird feather, a bit of bark, a shining pebble, or a lustrous

shell. They hovered around the "bee man" as he worked in a shed

always sweet with wood shavings, near his house. Wide-eyed, they

watched his eager face as he bent over a frame or pinched into one

of its angles a bit of wax. They wandered through the honey garden

with him and listened to his wondrous stories of insects and flowers.

Early in the morning, they could see him moving among his

neat, white hives, beginning a long day devoted to the care and study

• 9
 

156    OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

of his bees. A child who loved him remembered him in later years

as

a huge, portly, stooped figure in black bee bonnet hung about with a long

calico curtain softly, slowly, slouching through the garden between the blos-

soms and around his hives, the sun shining goldenly, the bees airily dancing

above his head as, the world forgot, wholeheartedly he peered into their wise

ways, studying, planning.

He told the children that white clover honey tastes clearly of the

blossom and is the finest of all.

Then comes red clover [he said]; then apple blossom honey from my

own orchard; locust honey from the trees of the campus; then linden, in point

of flavor; last of all buckwheat, not so dainty and not pure gold in the comb.15

A little boy who lived next door never forgot Father Langstroth,

though he lived to be a very old man. One day he with his parents

was a guest at the Langstroth home. The unusual courtesy that

Langstroth showed the small boy in a day when children were kept

in the background was an unforgettable experience. Langstroth's

young nephew and the little visitor, George Peck, were clothed in

bee hats and gloves after dinner and taken out into the yard crowded

with beehives. For hours Father Langstroth entertained those two

children with the marvels of bee life. All through George Peck's

long life, the memory of Langstroth's kindly smile and genial

presence was an inspiration.¹⁶

The recollections of the Reverend H. B. Brown, brother of Ox-

ford's famous farmers, Waldo and Benjamin Brown, which appeared

in the Oxford News, September 3, 1897, give an interesting side-

light on Langstroth:

One September day, along somewhere in the '50's, I was called from

my work to show a stranger about the farm. I was told by my brother that

he was a preacher from Philadelphia who had recently moved into the village

near which our farm was situated.

I found a pleasant-looking middle-aged gentleman who said he would

be glad to walk over the farm and see the crops. He listened attentively,

and I fancied I was impressing him....

As we passed a field of broom corn he noticed that some of the heads

were infested by a small wood louse and he told me some interesting facts

15 Memoir of Langstroth, in manuscript, by Jennie Brooks of Oxford.

16 Conversation with George Peck, now deceased.

• 10
 

LORENZO L. LANGSTROTH                       157

 

about their habits. Coming to a patch of watermelons, he called my attention

to the fact that some of the hills appeared to be affected by a blight, and

asked me the cause of it. I confessed ignorance, when he remarked that

possibly it was the work of an aphis or wood louse akin to those upon the

broom corn, and plucking off a leaf, he examined it by means of a small

microscope, which he carried in his pocket; then handing me the glass and

the leaf, he pointed out some things in which the two species differed....

Passing on, we came to a patch of Hubbard squashes, and he asked: "Do

you keep your seed pure?" I replied, "No! we send to Gregory at Marblehead

every spring for new seed." "There is no need of that," said he. "You have,

no doubt, observed that the pistillate flowers, from which the squashes are

formed, remain in blossom for only a day, while the staminate flowers con-

tinue for several days. As the bees are the principal agents in mixing different

species, by carrying pollen of one flower to another, if you would keep your

squashes pure, get up before it is fairly light (for the bees are early risers),

take a staminate blossom, shake the pollen into a pistillate blossom, then tie

it up with a piece of thread, put down a stake to mark it, and there you will

have a squash true to its kind."

In walking through the orchard, I found my companion knew all about

the different varieties of fruit, understood budding and grafting, was posted

in the best methods of fighting the curculio and other insect pests.

In the spring of 1859, Lorenzo Langstroth and Samuel Wag-

ner, with Richard Colvin of Baltimore, made arrangements to im-

port Italian bees from Jan Dzierzon of Silesia. Wagner had ordered

Italian bees four years before, but they had not survived the voyage.

Dzierzon never received the order from Langstroth, Wagner, and

Colvin. About this time the United States government attempted to

import Italian bees, and S. B. Parsons of Flushing, Long Island, was

employed to procure them. Parsons wrote to Langstroth asking his

advice about breeding and disseminating the bees when they should

arrive. Upon Parsons' invitation, Langstroth went to Flushing and

remained there almost two months caring for the imported bees,

trying to save as many queens as possible. The bees arrived in hol-

low sections of trees, but most of the bees were dead. Those that

were alive were in very poor condition. Only the loving care of

Langstroth saved them. Out of thirty colonies only seven queens

survived. But those few queens bred colonies which supplied many

a beekeeper with the nucleus of a colony.

Naturally, Langstroth and his son were soon breeding Italian

queens and experimenting with this new race of bees in Oxford.

• 11
 

158   OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

Hoping to improve the strain by careful breeding, Langstroth be-

gan to import Italian queens from Jan Dzierzon. In 1865, he wrote

Dzierzon that although Oxford was not in the best honey district,

he had several times obtained nearly 150 pounds of surplus honey

from a single stock of Ligurian bees. In 1881, Langstroth summar-

ized more than twenty years of comparative study of the native black

bees and the golden-banded Italian bees in a series of articles in the

American Bee Journal and in Cleanings in Bee Culture. These

articles show the meticulous care taken in his observations. The

Italian bees he considered highly superior to the native bees in many

respects.

Langstroth and his son were successful in the propagation of

the Italian queens. The Langstroth "twenty-dollar queens" were

known far and wide. In one year the Langstroths sold 2,000 dollars'

worth of Italian queen bees. They were sent by mail to destinations

as far as 1,200 and 1,500 miles away, arriving in perfect condition.

In the summer, Father Langstroth was usually happy and con-

tented. When autumn came the old nervous trouble frequently re-

turned. It was a curious form of melancholia, bordering on in-

sanity. Naturally exuberant and joyous, he grew moody and morose

as the black shadow fell upon him. It was his custom to exchange

papers with Professor McFarland across the way. As the attack

came on, he would not look up when he came to exchange the papers.

Always he went about with his eyes cast down when he felt the

seizure coming on. "His face would grow sodden and grave, his step

slower, no greeting would come from across the hedge" to the

children who loved him. They were saddened by the change in their

friend and companion. Sometimes, when the shadow began to fall

upon him, he would challenge Jennie Brooks (just a slip of a girl in

those days) to a game of chess. He had taught her the game, and if

by chance she checkmated him, he would rock with laughter. But

such days were rare. When he was well, he abhorred chess. When

he was ill, he shut himself in his room away from his family until

the fit of depression passed. Sometimes the attack lasted for months,

accompanied by great prostration of body and mind. He who loved

humanity so much could scarcely bear the sight of a human face.

Even his beloved bees he detested. Sometimes even the letter "B"

• 12
 

LORENZO L. LANGSTROTH                  159

 

offended him. Upon waking in the morning, he reached for the

chessboard and began to play. Or seated before an open fire, he

concentrated upon the most complex problems of chess, courageously

fighting to retain his reason. Days of agony, days of despair,

dragged slowly by in dreadful monotony. Incredibly fasting, in-

credibly determined, he fought through to sanity. Then, weak and

worn from the bitter struggle, he shyly took his place with his family

again. In the fall of 1853, when much depressed, friends sent him

to Matamoras, Mexico, to visit a brother. The trip by steamboat,

railroad, and stagecoach completely restored him by the time he

reached New Orleans. In later life he regretted that he had not had

the means and the will immediately to seek a change of scene as

soon as he felt the sickness coming on. When he was 64 years old,

these attacks became so frequent that he had to give up his apiary.

After that time, he never had more than a few colonies of bees at a

time. It was impossible for him to conduct a business of any size

after the death of his son. James had contracted tuberculosis dur-

ing the Civil War and had died from it in 1870.

It was in 1874 that Mrs. Robert White McFarland wrote to her

husband that she had called on Mr. Langstroth who lived just across

the street.

I went over to Mr. Langstroth's for an hour . .. [she wrote]. Mr. Lang-

stroth was in one of his talkative moods ... He showed us some of his ancient

books, read some from Hood's poems. He showed us and read some from

Tyndal's translation of the testament. ... I thought Mrs. Cowan might feel

proud of such a father.

Waldo Brown considered Langstroth one of the most interesting

persons he ever met. The big, blond, rosy-cheeked man was striking

in appearance and fascinating in conversation. He had a vast fund

of knowledge and a most happy way of imparting it to others. He

was deeply religious, but there was no sanctimonious, long-faced

piety in his makeup. He believed implicitly in the fatherhood of

God and the brotherhood of man and lived according to his faith.

He attended the Presbyterian church in Oxford regularly. On Sun-

day mornings, after the service, he always paused outside the church

door to converse with Brown on the state of the weather and the

crops. Invariably, after a good rain had broken a dry spell, he

• 13
 

160   OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

would extend his hand to his friend Waldo, quoting the 65th psalm,

"Thou visitest the earth and waterest it: thou greatly enrichest it with

the river of God .... Thou waterest the ridges thereof abundantly:

thou settlest the furrows thereof: thou makest it soft with showers:

thou blessest the springing thereof."

Langstroth took an active part in the affairs of the Presbyterian

church. At business meetings, if the trustees were weighed down by

difficulties, he could always raise their spirits by cheerful remarks

or by telling a funny story applicable to their situation. He some-

times occupied the pulpit, and Oxonians considered him an eloquent

preacher. One sermon Langstroth preached in that church was long

remembered. Its text was, "A virtuous woman who can find? For

her price is far above rubies." He became so absorbed in his sub-

ject that he held his audience spellbound for an hour and a half.

The "bee man" was as patriotic as he was religious. He sent his

only son to the front in the Civil War. With pen and tongue he

supported the Union cause and helped to assuage the suffering of

war widows and orphans. He had been brought up to hate slavery.

His maternal grandmother, Elizabeth Lorraine Dunn, had taught her

slaves to read when such an act was unlawful. She had freed her

Negroes and provided for the disabled and the aged, depriving her-

self of the greater part of a comfortable fortune. Langstroth was

against President Hall of Miami University, being convinced that

Hall was a Southern sympathizer. He was not entirely right on

that score, however. The feeling between Hall and Langstroth, ac-

cording to a letter written by Professor R. W. McFarland, was so

bitter that they quarreled on the street, Hall admitting that he had

said that Langstroth deserved a caning. Hall's daughter had re-

signed her position in the Presbyterian Sunday School and Langs-

troth hoped that the whole family would resign from the church.

Hall was a Peace Democrat, and Langstroth was heart and soul for

the war. One Sunday morning when the tide of battle was running

against the North, Langstroth walked into the pulpit of the Presby-

terian church much depressed. He began the service by reading the

psalm which contains the verse, "Thou executest righteousness and

judgment for all that are oppressed." Without lifting his eyes from

• 14
 

LORENZO L. LANGSTROTH                  161

the Bible, or changing the tone of his voice, he broke forth into the

majestic lines of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic."¹⁷

Lorenzo Lorraine Langstroth profited very little from his in-

vention and his writings, yet he is recognized at home and abroad as

having done more than any other man to make beekeeping profitable.

One of the reasons was that he lacked business acumen. Another

was his physical affliction, which prostrated him so much of the

time. When he first secured his patent, there were no factories to

manufacture his hives on an extensive scale, and there was no ready

advertising medium in the way of bee journals. The construction of

the hive was simple, and a good carpenter could make it quite

cheaply. There was no way of preventing a man who understood

the principle of the Langstroth hive from making it for himself.

Langstroth was robbed of his rights by shrewd men who boldly in-

fringed upon his patent. By 1863, he was forced to try to protect

himself by obtaining a reissue of his patent, which would expire in

1866. When it came time to prepare the affidavit for the commis-

sioner of patents, Langstroth was too ill to do anything about it. His

wife wrote the affidavit, and she wrote it well, under the date of July

25, 1866. In that document she wrote a history of the development

of the movable-frame hive¹⁸

R. C. Otis of Kenosha, Wisconsin, had bought from Langstroth

and Beals the patent right for the sale of hives in the western states

and territories. He had a great interest in keeping the patent alive,

because he had built up a fine business in the West. But Otis' agents

reported sundry hives with movable frames being sold under various

subterfuges. Hives had been patented which actually included the

Langstroth frame. The story of how Langstroth was defrauded is

one of the most sordid in the annals of business.

One of these wily competitors was Homer A. King, in business

in New York City. Otis finally sued him for infringement of patent.

In March 1871, Langstroth published in the American Bee Journal

a technical statement of how he was tricked by King. It was not a

pretty story. In the same issue of the Journal, he addressed the

American beekeepers, setting forth the troubles he had had with his

17 Recollections of Waldo Brown, in manuscript; letter, R. W. McFarland to his

wife, July 1861.

18 Quoted in Naile, Langstroth, 123-129.

• 15
 

162    OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

patent. The story of fraud was in the records of the patent office,

and there were men involved in it who deserved drastic punishment.

Langstroth invited all beekeepers in America to send to H. A. King

and Company any evidence which would even tend to weaken or in-

validate his own claims. He concluded by saying:

I stand upon what I believe to be my rights. If I have none, but am

unfortunate enough to be the honest original inventor, who, to his surprise and

sorrow, finds that he was not the first inventor, the sooner I know this, the

better; that I may at once cease from claiming what would then belong to the

public, and not to me.

The case of Otis versus King was never decided in court. Dur-

ing the trial, Langstroth succumbed to his old nervous trouble, and

everything stopped. Afterward, Otis' counsel died, and eventually

Mr. Otis was committed to an insane asylum, where he died. So

ended the famous Otis-King case. Langstroth himself had no in-

tention of going to court to protect his own rights against infringe-

ment. In the large territory which he still owned, he trusted all to

be guided by their consciences whether or not they should pay him a

fee, even though the law allowed him to collect damages for seven

years after the patent's expiration. The gentle Langstroth was sorely

grieved to find himself, in his old age, beset with trickery and con-

troversy.

King, in his journal, published half-truths and insinuations that

put Langstroth in a very embarrassing position. But some of the

finest bee men in the country boldly defended him. They were glad

to declare that the invention of the first usable movable-frame bee-

hive was Langstroth's, and no other's.19

There is no doubt that the boom in apiculture in the United

States and Canada was attributable more to Lorenzo Langstroth than

to any other man. The movable-comb hive and Langstroth's manual

for beekeepers simplified beekeeping immeasurably. Thanks to

Langstroth and a few other enterprising bee lovers, whole colonies

of black bees had been transformed in color and character by one

fertile, golden, Italian queen. The new bees were more tractable

and more industrious, which meant greater production of honey.

19 Ibid., 129-142.



• 16
 

LORENZO L. LANGSTROTH                 163

 

Beekeepers began to organize. Eventually a national associa-

tion was formed. Unfortunately, two calls were sent out at the same

time for a national convention in 1870. Two national conventions

were held, one in December 1870 at Indianapolis, and one at Cin-

cinnati early in February 1871. At Indianapolis, beekeepers from

eleven states, the territory of Utah, and the Dominion of Canada

organized the North American Beekeepers' Association. R. C. Otis

nominated the Reverend Mr. Langstroth for president, and he was

unanimously elected. A letter was read before the association con-

cerning a rival convention to be held in Cincinnati. Apparently, H.

A. King had called that convention without authority from his reg-

ional association, the Northeastern. About 150 beekeepers from

fourteen states and from Canada met in Cincinnati in February and

organized the American Beekeepers' Association. Langstroth was

unanimously elected president of that association, also. He accepted

with the understanding that the election was only a compliment, for

his health would permit no assumption of responsibilities.

"Something of a zephyr" was produced at the Thursday after-

noon session when H. A. King suavely proposed to raise 5,000

dollars for Langstroth's benefit. King said he would head the list

with fifty dollars, and two others subscribed fifty dollars each. Then

there was an ominous silence. Presently, a delegate from Canada

remarked that there was something mysterious about the manner in

which this subscription had been started. It had been insinuated to

him that Mr. Langstroth's financial condition was "either" the re-

sult of his "misfortunes" or of being "cheated out of his patents."

Mr. Otis then rose to say that if Mr. King would give fifty

dollars for charity, he would give five hundred for justice. Mr.

King responded that he would give a thousand dollars to have justice

done Mr. Langstroth. Mr. Otis came back with the accusation that

Mr. King was infringing upon Langstroth's rights with two patents.

The chair ruled that Mr. Otis was out of order. It had been said

that Otis had helped to ruin Langstroth, and Otis defied anyone to

say, in his presence, that such was the case. The subscription was

finally referred to a committee with King at its head.²⁰ Langstroth

said nothing till the committee brought in a favorable report con-

 

20 Cincinnati Commercial, February 9, 1871.

• 17
 

164   OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

cerning the fund. Then he said that he did not wish his personal

affairs to be considered by the association and that he wished the

matter to go no further.

At the convention, Langstroth was frequently and most re-

spectfully asked for his opinion. His informal remarks upon the

cultivation of bees were so well received that the association voted

that Langstroth should have the special privilege of speaking

whenever he chose and for as long as he wished to talk.

In 1874, Langstroth suffered a great sorrow in the death of his

beloved wife. In 1887, he removed with his daughter, Mrs. H. C.

Cowan, and her family to Dayton, Ohio.

As he grew older, the mental affliction troubled him less. In

September 1895, he was able to go to a meeting of the North Ameri-

can Beekeepers' Association at Toronto, Canada. There he ad-

dressed the convention and related the story of his labors with an

early shipment of Italian bees. On October 6, 1895, he died in the

Wayne Avenue Presbyterian Church in Dayton, just as he was be-

ginning a sermon on the love of God. It was fitting that he should

die thus, for he ever loved the ministry and never ceased to regret

that he could not pursue his chosen calling. Always he wore the

clerical collar.

He was buried in the Woodlawn Cemetery at Dayton. The

stone that marks his grave is the gift of many grateful beekeepers,

and is suitably inscribed to the "Father of American Beekeeping."

Lorenzo Lorraine Langstroth was a prince among men. Few

suffered more cruelly at the hand of their fellows than he, but there

was no room in his great heart for bitterness and revenge. He was

straightforward and kind, more wise and discerning in the ways of

bees than in the ways of men. One of his admirers said that there

was "a lofty dignity and moral majesty" about him that was deeply

impressive. As Amos Ives Root said, "He was a poet, a sage, a

philosopher, and a humanitarian all in one."

• 18