The part played by Sir Christopher Wren in the evolution of the bar-frame hive, though not so romantic, was fraught with almost equal significance to modern bee-craft. Movable comb-frames were as yet undreamed of in Wren’s time, nearly two hundred years before Major Munn invented them. But Wren seems to have been the discoverer of a principle just as important. This was what latter-day bee-keepers call “storification.” Wren’s hive consisted of a series of wooden boxes, octagonal in shape, placed one below the other, with inter-communicating doors, and glass windows in the sides of each section. Up to that date bee-hives had been merely single receptacles made of straw, plastered wattles, or wood. When the stock had outgrown its dwelling there was nothing for it but to swarm. But by the device of adding another story below the first one, when this was crowded with bees, and a third or even a fourth if necessary, Wren was able to make his hive grow with the growth of his bee-colony or contract with its post-seasonal decline. He had, in fact, invented the elastic brood-chamber, which alone enables the bee-master to put in practice the one cardinal maxim of successful bee-keeping—the production of strong stocks.
Wren’s octagon storifying hive seems to have been plagiarised by most eminent bee-masters of his day and after with the naïve dishonesty so characteristic among bee-men of the time. Thorley’s hive is obviously taken from, indeed, is probably identical with, that of Wren. The hive made and sold by Moses Rusden, King Charles II.’s bee-master, is of almost exactly the same pattern, but it is described as manufactured under the patent of one John Geddie. This patent was taken out by Geddie in 1675, and Geddie would appear to be the arch-purloiner of the whole crew. For it is quite certain that, having had one of Wren’s hives shown to him, he was not content with merely copying it, but actually went and patented the principle as his own idea.
But Wren’s hive, good as it was in comparison with the single-chambered straw skep or wooden box, still lacked one vital element. Although he and his imitators had realised the advantage of an expanding bee-hive, this was secured only by the process of “nadiring,” or adding room below. Thus the upper part of Wren’s hive always contained the oldest and dirtiest combs, and as bees almost invariably carry their stores upwards, the production of clear, uncontaminated honey under this system was impossible. It remained for a Scotsman, Robert Kerr, of Stewarton, in Ayrshire, to perfect, some hundred and fifty years later, what Wren had so ingeniously begun.