Indeed - one of my passions in life is establishing 'how we have come to believe what we do' and/or 'how certain things around us have become established as norms'. With regard to the Langstroth frame length - I wonder how many people know the reason Langstroth chose that ? And yet it has become a fixed standard, world-wide - thanks to Root of course.NigelP wrote: ↑11 Dec 2020, 08:55Yes that was a most interesting period in beekeeping. Which saw numerous hive designs, change over to movable frames. The first imports of "foreign" bees etc etc.Little John wrote: ↑08 Dec 2020, 23:46For the last few years I've been researching the period 1840 to the end of that Century, during which many of the 'standards' which we still see today in some parts of the world were established.
One of my reasons for (possibly) reviving the Gallup Frame is that it's length features in Langstroth's 1852 Patent:
The inside dimensions of the box containing the combs, as I usually construct it, are as follows: Lenth[sic], eighteen inches and one eighth. This will give room for twelve movable frames. Breadth, twelve inches and one eighth. The extra eighth of an inch is to enable me to have sufficient play for slight variations in the glass. Depth below the rabbets nine or ten inches.
US Patent 9300, October 5th, 1852. 'Bee Hive', L.L.Langstroth, page 5, line 46 et seq.
And of course the only way of inserting 12 frames in a box 18x12 (with a depth of 9-10 inches) is to hang them across the 12-inch dimension - thus the frames must have been 11.25" long in order to preserve an appropriate spacing from the hive wall at both sides. His only negative criticism of that frame size was that a smaller frame would: a) mean having more of them, thus increasing hive manufacturing cost; and b) there would be more frames for a beekeeper to inspect, and so he adopted a larger size instead.
Enough ...
I agree - Huber was far in advance of his time.
LJ
A Heretics Guide to Beekeeping - http://heretics-guide.atwebpages.com