Dzierzon was a German Clergyman who wrote a montly newsletter entitled "The Bee Friend From Schlesien". He has kept bees all of his life, as did his father. One of his main achievements was his encouraging readers to use a moveable type frame allowing them to leaf through hives and also making it possible to not destroy comb with each harvest. In 1861 he wrote "Rational BeeKeeping", a now famous work covering the whole of shared knowledge up to that point. He is considered in Europe as the father of rational beekeeping just as Langstroth is in America. Although Langstroth and Dzierzon worked independently, many of their discoveries were parallel. Dzierzon also understood bee-space but never calls it such in his book. He does say that the movable type frames must be 1 ½ inches on-center to get good comb build. In fact the importance in spacing of movable type frames was known much earlier. Miner’s patented “Equilateral Hive” utilized a 3/8-inch space between special guide plate openings. From this it is clear that Miner understood the importance of bee space quite early. It is known that Langstroth owned a copy of the 1849 first edition of Miner’s book, and was probably influenced by it but he states that it was years later that a friend showed him Dzierzon's book and they realized that they had both hit on the same ideas. Dzierzon's hive fell out of use since you had to manipule every frame to examine any one frame. He is also credited with finding the spermatheca and discovery that the queen stores sperm throughout her reproductive life. He was particulary interested in an idea he called "parthenogenesis" in which he viewed the future of the hive sacrificed. He said "Nature is not always able to proportion the means to the end .. If the goal is to preserve, certainly this method is flawed." Although parthenogenesis is now recognized, when he first suggested it nearly a century and a half century ago, it was not well received. Some of the critics were highly politically placed which in his day was far more important than our “pier review” in publishing is today. Dzierzon prevailed and nearly all the countries of central Europe honored him in for this finding. Dave