From The Great Sunflower Project: http://www.greatsunflower.org/en
Dear All:
I received a request from Carl Flatow of Science Friday (He’s Ira’s brother) to spread the word that they are soliciting signatures to get the Post office to do a stamp of L.L. Langstroth next year. Who is L.L. Langstroth, you ask? I vaguely knew that my honeybee hive had something to do with Langstroth so, I looked him up. Langstroth is considered the father of modern bee keeping. He actually invented the hives that we use today where there is a box that is filled with hanging frames. His important discovery was what he called “bee space”. This is a distance of 3/8-¼ inch or less that bees use as a passageway. If the space is less than that width, bees fill it with sticky bee sealant called propolis. If the space is larger than that width, they will fill it with honeycomb. Langstroth designed a hive where all the spaces were ¼ of an inch. He was a Congregationalist minister and took up beekeeping to keep his depression at bay. Next year will be his 200th birthday and Science Friday is celebrating it by developing a curriculum for schools to learn about bees and working to convince the Postal Service that L. L. Langstroth is worthy of a stamp. You can find out more at :http://scifri.org/dte/about/projects/bee-science/postage-due/. There is some time sensitivity to this as letters need to be into the post office before the end of the year.
Bee Well!
Gretchen
The Queen Bee
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