Lorenzo Lorraine Langstroth published Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee: A Bee Keeper’s Manual in 1853, marking the birth of modern commercial beekeeping. Langstroth’s personal health issues in the late 1880s led to a major turning point for the manual. Suffering from severe bouts of depression, Langstroth handed over the rights to revise his work to the prominent French-American beekeeping family, Charles Dadant & Son. By 1890, apiary technology had advanced significantly since the original 1853 text. The Dadants extensively re-wrote, modernized, and expanded the text to roughly 650 pages. The 1890 edition fully integrated crucial 19th-century commercial advancements that came after Langstroth’s original invention, including comb foundation (pre-made wax sheets) and the centrifugal honey extractor. While keeping Langstroth’s biological foundations and core principles, it began reflecting the Dadants’ preference for larger brood chambers, laying the groundwork for what would eventually evolve into the “Dadant Hive” system. Because it represents a bridge between Langstroth’s early mechanics and modern commercial management, this specific version remains highly sought after by historical apiarists. This is an original 1890 edition. This particular volume is highly regarded by collectors because it marks the First UK Edition of the historic “Dadant Revision”. It was issued in the UK just as the Dadants officially took over editing the text from Langstroth to modernise it with advanced 19th-century commercial beekeeping techniques. Illustrated throughout, this hardback edition is a nice, tight clean copy in good condition overall. Evidently, over the last 100+ years, the book has succumbed to some fading / shelfwear commensurate with the age of the book – there is light spotting in some of the pages but as I have endeavoured to show in the photos, these’imperfections’ do not mar the quality and desirability of, increasingly scarce, collectible edition.
