Beehive shelf

A beehive shelf is shown in the left-hand picture. The middle picture shows the shelf from the side with a gas entering from a tube on the left and bubbling up through a hole. The right-hand drawing is about half the scale of the others and shows the shelf in use inside a pneumatic trough.

A beehive shelf is a piece of laboratory equipment, usually of pottery, used to support a receiving jar or tube while a gas is being collected over water with a pneumatic trough.

History

The name derives from the design of early beehives made from bound grass called a skep.The squat circular shape was made by binding the grass bundles to form a flat wheel. Sides were added using the same material with a cutout to allow honey bees to enter and leave the hive.

See also

• Pneumatic chemistry

Further reading

• Griffin, John Joseph, Chemical Handicraft: A Classified and Descriptive Catalogue of Chemical Apparatus, page 226, 1877