It is different in the steep mountains, where nature is not accessible to cultivation; there we find everywhere the same plants in a certain region, as, larches, pines, Alpine-roses, gentian; also animals, as, chamois, wild goats, white hares, who do not thrive well in the plains. Here then, in the mountains, must we look for the origin of animals. For, at the time of the great deluge, all animals in the plains were, certainly, the first to perish, and those in the mountains were, in all probability, left for posterity.
The yellow Italian Alp-bee is a mountain insect; it is found between two mountain chains to the right and left of Lombardy and Rhatian Alps, and comprises the whole territory of Tessir, Veltlin, and South-Graubunden. It thrives up to the height of 4,500 feet above the level of the sea, and appeal's to prefer the northern clime to the warmer, for in the south of Italy it is not found.
From the mountain those bees later emigrated into the plains, but they do not thrive so well there.
Some learned men have called them ligurian bees, but that name has neither historical nor geographical claim, and not one bee-cultivator of the whole district of the Italian Alp-bee knows what kind of insects ligurian bees are. The Alps are their native country, therefore they are called Yellow Alp-bee[1] or tame house bees, in antithesis to the black European bees, whom we might call common forest bees, and who, on the slightest touch, fly like lightning into your face.
[1] It is not at all an indifferent matter by what name anything is called. Many bee-cultivators in German-Switzerland deceived by the name of "Ligurian bees," and in expectation to receive a foreign race, have purchased such bees at high prices from Germany; that they will not do again, as the natural name, "Alp-bee" will immediately show where that bee is at home: that is in Switzerland.
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.
The Italian yellow bee differs from the common black bee in its longer, slender form, and light chrome yellow colour, with light brimstone coloured wings, and two orange-red girths, each one-sixth of an inch wide. Working bees as well as drones have this mark. The drones are further distinguished by the girths being scolloped, like the spotted water-serpent, and obtain an astonishing size; almost half as corpulent again as the black drones. The queen has the same marks as the working bees, but much more conspicuous and lighter; she is much larger than the black queen, and easy to be singled out of the swarm, on account of her remarkable bodily size and light colour.
These bees are almost transparent when the sun shines on them.
This race has nothing in common with the black bees; this can be instantly seen by their ways and manner of building. The cells of the Italian bees are considerably deeper and broader than those of the black bees. Fifteen cells of the Italians are as broad as sixteen cells of the black kind. It must be very interesting to measure them geometrically.
They are extremely tender, amiable little creatures, and a bee-protector is not necessary with them, as, unprovoked, they never sting, least of all their own master. It is a specific Swiss bee; the Alps are their home, and there they thrive beautifully; the higher the better. The exhalation of an Italian bee-hive is pungent, and easy to be distinguished from a German hive.