Into dreamful slumbers lulled."
Our own experience with the Italian Alp bee enables us to corroborate the statements which have been made in favour of this new variety. 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 living in the neighbourhood of our apiary, when inspecting our hives, observed 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 127]), it becomes naturalized, 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: 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.
In the season of 1864, we had more honey from a Ligurian stock than from any one of our colonies of black bees. From this Ligurian hive we have taken a glass super containing 40 lbs. nett of honey, besides having drawn from it an artificial swarm; and, after all, it remains the strongest hive in our apiary.
The Baron Von Berlepsch and Pastor Dzierzon, who are probably the two most intelligent and skilful bee-keepers of Germany, award to the Italian a very decided preference over the common bees. The Baron says that he has found:—"1. That the Italian bees are less sensitive to cold than the common kind. 2. That their queens are more prolific. 3. That the colonies swarm earlier and more frequently. 4. That they are less apt to sting, 5. They are more industrious. 6. That they are more disposed to rob than common bees, and more courageous and active in self-defence. They strive, whenever opportunity offers, to force their way into colonies of common bees; but when strange bees attack their hives, they fight with great fierceness and with incredible adroitness."
It is said that the Italian bee can extract honey from some flowers which the common bee is unable to penetrate. For instance, the blossom tubes of the red clover being too deep for the probosces of the common bees, that flower is useless to them, although so plentiful; but, says Mr. Langstroth, the American apiarian, the Italian bee visits the red clover assiduously, and draws large quantities of honey from it.[24]
[24] This opinion is not held by the closest observer of Italian bees in England.
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 July, 1859, offering to supply us with Italian Alp queen-bees. This letter, or an extract from it, appeared in the current number of the Journal of Horticulture (then called the Cottage Gardener), a periodical that regularly opens its columns to apiarian subjects. Prior to this the Italian Alp, or, as it has been named, the "Ligurian" bee, was unknown in this country, except to a few naturalists. The letter referred to attracted the attention of that intelligent apiarian, T. W. Woodbury, Esq., now 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 Alp 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 taken. His efforts were very successful, and "the spring of 1860 found him in possession of four Ligurianized stocks." His subsequent experience with the Italian Alp bee he has 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. The pamphlet was speedily published by us, 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, it would be sufficient to identify the Italian Alp bee as the species described by Hood in "Miss Kilmansegg";—those which dwelt in
"A golden hive, on a golden bank,