Frame Spacing
Quinby spaced his frames — and therefore the combs of the colony — 1 1/2 inches from center to center. He followed former apiarists, such as Dzierzon, in this, and thought it the correct distance. Langstroth spaced his combs a fraction over 1 3/8 inches apart and thought it correct. The manufacturers of hives of the United States, without investigating the matter very deeply, made the spacing of frames exactly 1 3/8. They had good authorities behind them, for Berlepsch, one of the leaders of the middle of the 19th Century, asserted that this spacing was the one followed by bees. Adopting the Quinby hive, we adopted his spacing. When the matter was discussed and we referred to the bees, in natural condition, for their testimonial, we found that they make all sorts of spacing in building their combs, from one to two inches or even more, from center to center. But they aim to have their worker-brood combs a half inch apart, between the combs, which would about represent the 1 3/8 spacing, from center to center.
All this may look very unimportant to the beginner. Yet much of the success or failure of beekeeping depends upon just such small matters.
The supporters of the narrow spacing look upon the wide spacing as a detriment and Mr. Julius Hoffman, inventor of the frame bearing his name, wrote:
“If we space the combs from center to center 1 1/2 inches, instead of 1 3/8, then we have an empty space of 5/8 inch between two combs of brood, instead of 1/2, as it ought to be; and it will certainly require more bees to fill and keep warm a 5/8 than a 1/2 inch space. In a 1/2 inch space, the breeding bees from the two combs facing each other will join with their backs, and so close up the space between the two brood combs. If this space is widened to 5/8 the bees cannot do this, and more bees will be required to keep up the needed brood-rearing temperature. What a drawback this would be in a cool spring, when our colonies are still weak in numbers, yet breeding most desirable, can readily be understood.”
This is a good argument but it does not work well in practice, in large hives. When the breeding season ends, the, bees living between combs spaced 1/2 inches put more honey in each brood comb, since there is more room and they do not need, then, to keep the cells down to the exact length of the bee chrysalis, as in breeding time. So the comb, or that part of it that is filled with honey, is thickened so as to leave just the necessary room for the bees to pass through. This gives a larger amount of honey than in narrow combs; the bees congregate there in greater number and thus winter better. They are more powerful in spring and the cycle of the year is reached with better success.
The above theory is backed by facts. Bees in large, deep brood-chambers, with the wide spacing, are stronger, winter better, gain strength faster than those in shallow hives, all other conditions being equal. The reader will remember that these facts were established before we tried to explain them by a theory. No theory is strong unless it is backed by the facts of experience. The experience must also be secured on a sufficient scale to make it proof against possible exceptions. The testing of this matter on hundreds of hives, in separate apiaries, treated in similar manner, leaves but little room for doubt of the correctness of the theory. On half a dozen hives, other conditions might change the result.
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