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. The ordinary bee is the Apis mellifica of naturalists; the new kind is the Apis ligustica. It 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, who speak of the "best kind" of bee as being of a red colour. Leading apiarians agree in pronouncing these bees to be justly entitled to the high character given them. (See coloured engraving, [Plate I., figs, 1, 2, 3.]) Their special advantages are—greater fecundity of the queens, less irascibility, and a more handsome appearance, for, being of a golden colour, they are prettier than our black bees.
Tennyson most probably refers to these Ligurian bees in the following stanza of his beautiful poem "Eleanore":—
"Or the yellow banded bees,
Through half-open lattices,
Coming in the scented breeze,
Fed thee, a child, lying alone,
With whitest honey in fairy gardens culled:
A glorious child, dreaming alone
In silk soft folds, upon yielding down,
With the hum of swarming bees