§ V. THE ITALIAN OR LIGURIAN BEE.
A new, or rather a re-discovered, variety of bee has recently been brought into practical use amongst apiarians in Germany and America, as well as in this country. It has been called "the Yellow Italian Alp Bee," and was also named "the Ligurian Bee" by the Marquis de Spinola, who found it in Piedmont in 1805; and he considered it to be the principal species known to the Greeks. "There can exist no doubt," says Kleine, in his handbook, "The Italian Bee and its Culture," "that both kinds were known side by side from the earliest times. Even mythology relates that Jupiter, out of gratitude for their having fed him with honey when a new-born god, afterwards made the bee 'brass-coloured' or 'golden-coloured.' Aristotle also noticed the coloured as different from the black bee, and Virgil adduces the same distinction." The latter speaks of the "best kind" of bee as being of a golden colour with ruddy scales. It is stated that it is found also in Spain. Leading apiarians are all but unanimous in pronouncing these bees justly entitled to the high character given them. The special advantages claimed for them are—greater fecundity of the queens, more industry and productiveness, less irascibility, and a more handsome appearance; for, being of a golden colour, they are prettier than our black bees. (See coloured engraving, [Plate I. Figs. 1, 2, 3.])
The Italian varies but little from the common bee in its physical characteristics. The difference in appearance consists in the first three rings of the abdomen being of an orange colour instead of a deep brown, except the posterior edge and under portion of the third, which are black: some individuals, however, have less colour about them than others—the younger bees far the most. These orange-coloured parts are transparent when closely examined with the sun shining on them. The drones are more darkly ringed than the workers, and are light-yellow beneath, which is an infallible mark of distinction from the English drones, which are nearly white in that part; many are also a fourth part smaller than the English. The queens vary greatly: "The finest and rarest," says Von Berlepsch, "are bright yellow varying into a bluish. Others rather resemble the workers, exhibiting only yellow rings; and a few are very difficult or impossible to distinguish from our own. From this we see that the Italian is not a constant race, like, e.g., our own or the Egyptian."
It is now over thirty years since attention was recalled to this variety by Captain von Baldenstein, who, when stationed in Italy during a part of the Napoleonic wars, had observed that the bees about Lake Como were of a different colour from ordinary ones. In later years, after his retirement from military life, he became a student of natural history, and, remembering these bees, he procured a colony of them in 1843. This he preserved, through constant disappointments, for seven years, and in 1848 he communicated to the Bienenzeitung the deductions of his experience. From this Dr. Dzierzon was induced to pursue the experiment, and from him the variety became introduced in Germany.
The introduction of this new variety of bee into England was through our agency. M. Hermann, a bee-cultivator at Tamins-by-Chur, Canton Grison, Switzerland, wrote to us on the 5th of July, 1859, offering to supply us with Italian queen bees. The date should be specially noted, because this was the commencement of a new era in bee-keeping in this country. We were always in friendly intercourse with the late Mr. H. Taylor, author of "The Bee-keeper's Manual," and then correspondent on Bee Culture to the Cottage Gardener (since called the Journal of Horticulture); and, being in the practice of frequently discussing apiarian subjects with him, we told him of the offer made us of a new kind of bee. He said he knew nothing about it himself, but asked permission to publish the intelligence in the journal he was connected with, and we assented, entirely for public interest and to gratify him. The letter, or an extract from it, appeared accordingly in the current number of the journal referred to. Prior to this the Italian, or, as many have called it, the "Ligurian" bee, was UNKNOWN IN THIS COUNTRY, except to a few naturalists. The same letter attracted the attention of that intelligent apiarian, the late T. W. Woodbury, Esq., so well known as the "Devonshire Bee-keeper." On the 19th of July, that is, a fortnight after M. Hermann's offer, we received a consignment of Italian bees—the first imported into England. With these Mr. Woodbury also received one queen bee and a few workers, which he introduced into a hive of English bees from which the queen had been removed. His efforts were very successful, and "the spring of 1860 found him in possession of four Ligurianised stocks." His subsequent experience with this new variety he fully described in a communication to the Bath and West of England Agricultural Journal.
Subsequently M. Hermann sent us a copy of his pamphlet entitled "The Italian Alp Bee; or, the Gold-Mine of Husbandry," with the request that we should have it translated from the German, and that copies of it should be printed in the English language. It was speedily published by us accordingly, and, although singular as a literary production, it may be useful for the advanced apiarian.
Certainly the bees are partially of an orange or golden colour, and if one could believe the golden anticipations indulged in by M. Hermann respecting them, these would be sufficient to identify the Italian bee as the species described by Hood in "Miss Kilmansegg"—those which dwelt in
"A golden hive, on a golden bank,
Where golden bees, by alchemical prank,
Gather gold instead of honey."
In the pamphlet referred to, M. Hermann gives the following description of what he insists on designating as Apis helvetica: "The Yellow Italian Alp bee is a mountain insect; it is found between two mountain chains to the right and left of Lombardy and the Rhetian Alps, and comprises the whole territory of Ticino, Val Tellina, and the southern Grisons.[9] It thrives up to the height of 4,500 feet above the level of the sea, and appears to prefer the northern clime to the warmer, for in the south of Italy it is not found. The Alps are their native country, therefore they are called Yellow Alp or tame house bees, in contradistinction to the black European bees, which we might call common forest bees, and which, on the slightest touch, fly like lightning into your face.[?]
[9] Otherwise Tessin, Veltlin (French Valteline), and the southern Graubünden. Von Berlepsch names the localities they inhabit as Genoa, Venetia, Lombardy, and the southern valleys of the Grisons bordering upon Italy.
"As all good and noble things in the world are more scarce than common ones, so there are more common black bees than of the noble yellow race, which latter inhabit only a very small piece of country, while the black ones are at home everywhere in Europe, and even in America."
Our own experience with the Italian bee enables us to corroborate the statements which have been made in its favour. We find the queens more prolific than those of the common kind, and the quantity of honey produced is greater. These two facts stand as cause and effect: the bees being multiplied more quickly, the store of honey is accumulated more rapidly, and the Italian bees consume, if anything, less food than the common kind. When of pure Italian blood these bees are, by some apiarians, thought to be hardier than our own. That they forage for stores with greater eagerness, and have little hesitation in paying visits to other hives, we can testify from our own observation. The following anecdote will illustrate their intrusive propensities; Another bee-keeper, who lived in the same neighbourhood, was once inspecting our hives, when, on observing the yellow bees, he exclaimed, "Now I have found out where those strange-looking bees come from; for," said he, "these yellow-jackets are incessant visitors to my hives. I thought they were a species of wasp that had come to rob, and until now I have been unable to account for their appearance at the entrance of my hive, so that I have killed them by hundreds." This was not at all pleasing intelligence for us, and we trust that our neighbour has been more lenient to "the yellow-jackets" since his visit, for such summary capital punishment was wholly unmerited, because when a bee is peaceably received (see [page 169]) it becomes naturalised, and works side by side with the others in its fresh abode. We are inclined to believe that more visiting takes place amongst bees of different hives than bee-keepers have been accustomed to suppose; but where the Italian and black bees are kept near each other, the foreigners being conspicuous by their lighter colour, there is less difficulty in identifying them when at the entrance of other hives. Von Berlepsch, we find, remarks that there exists during the gathering season a species of "communism of dwellings" between the bees of neighbouring hives.
The Italian bees are more active than common bees when on the wing. They are also observed to work longer hours than other bees both early and late, as well as in seasons when the latter will not stir abroad. Thus altogether they are much more productive. In many seasons we have had more honey from an Italian stock than from any one of our colonies of black bees. From this hive we have taken a glass super containing forty pounds nett of honey, besides having drawn from it an artificial swarm; and after all it remained the strongest hive in our apiary.
In a private letter received from Mr. Langstroth he informed us that in the season of 1865 he bred over 300 Italian queens; these he disseminated to various' bee-masters on the American continent, and the united opinion of apiarians in that country was increasingly in favour of the decided advantage of the cultivation of the Italian bee. At the present date it is literally "all the rage" with bee-keepers there. With ourselves there is a quieter but not less genuine welcome accorded to it. In the British Bee Journal for May 1877, the distinguished apiarian "A Renfrewshire Bee-keeper" writes: "After careful study and comparison of both I found the Italian superior for beauty, prolificness, power, and activity, and (to my view the greatest value of all) for fresh blood."
To the testimonies already cited we will now add that of the late Mr. Woodbury. The following is extracted from the paper contributed by him to the Bath and West of England Agricultural Journal: "From my strongest Ligurian stock I took eight artificial swarms in the spring, besides depriving it of numerous brood-combs. Finding, in June, that the bees were collecting honey so fast that the queen could not find an empty cell in which to lay an egg, I was reluctantly compelled to put on a super. When this had been filled with thirty-eight pounds of the finest honeycomb,[10] I removed it, and as the stock hive (a very large one) could not contain the multitude of bees which issued from it, I formed them into another very large artificial swarm. The foregoing facts speak for themselves; but as information on this point has been very generally asked, I have no hesitation in saying that I believe the Ligurian honey bee infinitely superior in every respect to the only species that we have hitherto been acquainted with."
[10] This super was exhibited at our stand in the International Exhibition of 1862.
The chorus of praise is not however universal. Most noticeable is the broad divergence of views between the two greatest apiarians of Germany—Dr. Dzierzon and Baron von Berlepsch. The former pronounces this bee less given to stinging, less sensitive of cold, more prolific, earlier in brood-raising and swarming, forwarder also in comb-building, more industrious and honey-yielding, more courageous in defence of its stores, and prompter in expelling the drones. The Baron examines these and other assertions one by one, and declares emphatically that, after a long course of experience, he has not found them true in a single particular. He calls the bee "the Italian humbug," and sums up as follows: "While it may perhaps be distinguished from our own by a somewhat slighter disposition to sting, but, on the other hand, it begins building drone comb and raising numbers of drones in the first year, and its queens grow unfertile so early, and that mostly at so inopportune a time, it stands manifestly inferior to our own in a relation of economic utility, and has therefore for us no practical value at all."[11]
[11] In our previous editions Von Berlepsch's views were cited as strongly favourable to the Italian bee. The change is his own, and he now makes full recantation of his "error."
Though we are unshaken in our adhesion to the Italian bee by these opposite views, it is impossible to treat them as beneath consideration. They are not a mere prejudice, for the Baron was at first as much prepossessed in the strangers' favour as any one. But it would be still less possible to set aside on their account the united testimony of Dzierzon, Langstroth, and a host of others who are above delusion on such a point. How then can we account for this one notable divergence? In the first place, much of Von Berlepsch's data are negative only, and negative evidence can never set aside positive; thus when he tells us that he "has not observed" earlier activity or greater courage or less sensitiveness, while others of unquestioned judgment have observed these points, we cannot hesitate to decide in the favour of the latter. As to less disposition to sting, the positive evidence should be on the Baron's side when he says that they do sting; but in this case, as we have seen, he partly concedes the point. As to productiveness and fecundity, there may be some undetected peculiarity about this bee to which something in the Seebach apiary or neighbourhood is not so congenial as in other parts. At all events. Dr. Dzierzon is unmoved from his faith, for we find him in the present year giving as the result of twenty-five years experience that this bee is "as gentle, diligent, and prolific as it is beautiful;" that it "bears our German climate well, and that its preservation in purity is with some care quite possible."
Still some persons are sure to be disappointed with a foreign bee, just as some will be with a foreign country. Some have had their expectations raised too highly, and expect wonderful results to follow without effort; others, on the contrary, are so wrapt up in the new treasure that they cherish it with vastly greater pains than their other bees, and thus attribute to the bee itself what is partly to be credited to their own superior care. In particular, with regard to the greater fecundity of the queens, we think some allowance ought to be made for the circumstance that in order to meet the demand for Italian queens they are being continuously bred, so that when united to English stocks they are always young and in the prime as to fertility; whilst the common black queens are allowed to exist in the hives their appointed time, as there is nothing to call for encouraging their special propagation. In making comparisons we think this fact has been a little overlooked; but though too much may have been thus credited to the Italians, we think there is a clear balance on this point in their favour, and they retain altogether our most decided preference.