Rev. Lorenzo Lorraine Langsgtroth was a Congregational minister who lived in the 19th century. He graduated from Yale University in 1831. He served various Congregational churches in Massachusetts for the next 17 years. In 1848 he became the principal of a women’s school in Greenfield, Massachusetts. He died in the pulpit of the Wayne Avenue Presbyterian Church in Dayton, Ohio on October 6, 1895. At the time he was just beginning a sermon on the love of God.

I probably would not have known anything about Rev. Langstroth, however, had it not been for his hobby, which he turned into a full-time vocation when he was around the age of 48. Although he continued to be active in the church and occasionally served as a guest preacher in various congregations, he turned away from the full-time ministry to pursue full-time beekeeping. About six years before he retired from the ministry, he received a patent for the first movable frame beehive in America. At the time of the patent, Langstroth was keeping nearly 100 hives. The ideas behind Langstroth’s hive invention had been discovered and implemented in European hives, but Langstroth brought together both removable frames and a system of keeping precise spaces between the various parts of the hive allowing for the frames to be easily and safely removed without disrupting the bees.

Langstroth hives are the most popular hives among both amateur and commercial beekeepers to this day. They are wooden boxes with frames that hang from the top of the box. The tops of the frames touch leaving space between the lower parts of the frames. Above the tops of the frames there is a wooden inner cover and an outer cover goes over the entire structure. The boxes can be stacked allowing a colony to occupy more than one box. A queen excluder, which is a metal mesh that allows worker bees to pass through it, but has holes too small for the larger queen can be placed between the lower boxes containing the colony and an upper box. The area where the queen cannot go does not have any developing bee eggs or larvae and is used for honey storage only. This makes harvesting of the honey a relatively simple procedure for the beekeeper.

What makes the hive work is the precise spacing between frames and tops. Langstroth didn’t make his own hives. He likely wasn’t a cabinet maker. A Philadelphia cabinetmaker and fellow bee enthusiast, Henry Bourquin, made the first hives to Langstroth’s specifications. What makes the hives work so well is an understanding of the space bees need within a hive. In order to lay eggs the queen needs to be able to move among the hanging honeycomb. In the wild, bees build colonies in empty spaces such as voids in trees or even holes in the ground. Inside the hive they hang honeycomb from the top in strips, leaving space between them. Hives for domestic bees provide that space and Langstroth hives provide frames upon which the bees can build their comb. The frames speed up the process of building the hive for the bees. Making the frames removable allows the beekeeper to inspect the colony and to harvest honey. Beekeepers had made hives with removable frames before Langstroth received his patent. What made his hives unique was the careful and precise spacing between frames. If a space less than 1/4 inch was left between the frames or between the frame and the top, the bees would fill that space with propolis. The propolis is so sticky that it makes separation of frames and even removal of the top of the box nearly impossible. However, if the space was larger than 3/8 of an inch, the bees would fill the space with comb. Leaving a space that was between 1/4 and 3/8 of an inch resulted in all of the comb being built on the frames and the top and frames of the box being removable. Such a box is a Langstroth hive.

I’ve been reading a lot about bee hives recently. Like Langstroth, I made my career as a congregational minister. Like him, I am not a cabinet maker. Like him, I have become fascinated with honey bees in my retirement. Unlike him, I’m a lot older starting as an amateur beekeeper. Fortunately for me, I can take advantage of Langstroth’s discoveries and the experiences of thousands of other beekeepers as I set up my apiary for the arrival of my first bees sometime in mid-April.

Our son’s farm provides the space where I’ll keep my hives. I’m starting with two hives and have no plans to expand. A small apiary will be just fine for a hobby beekeeper. The farm’s orchard, berry plants and flowers will provide plenty of nectar for the bees and the bees will increase the productivity of the farm by helping with pollination of the plants. I should be able to harvest honey. Two hives will produce more honey than our family can consume. I’m not exactly sure what I will do with the surplus. Perhaps I will donate it to a local food bank. Perhaps I will allow my granddaughters to sell it at their stand where they sell surplus eggs from the chickens. Thinking of excess honey is getting way ahead of where I am right now, however. I haven’t even installed bees in my hives. I’m just setting up the hives and getting ready. I’ve ordered bees from established beekeepers who are skilled at dividing colonies and can provide 5-frame nuclear colonies that is already established and can be moved and installed in my hives. Those colonies can be installed because the precision of the Langstroth hive allows frames to be moved between boxes where they will fit with the required 1/4” to 3/8” space.

Throughout my life, I’ve enjoyed many different hobbies. Most of them, such as skiing, flying airplanes, collecting canoes and kayaks, and other hobbies have required that our family spend considerable amounts of money. Beekeeping holds the potential to become a break-even hobby, giving our family more benefit from honey than cost in supplies. Time will tell whether or I will be successful and the venture will pan out.

In the meantime, I have a sense of following a fellow Congregational minister. I’m grateful for Rev. Lorenzo Langstroth and his love of keeping bees.