The Marquis of Spinola has called this bee the Apis ligustica, but on the same ground the Bavarians may call their bee Apis bavaria, or the Berlinians theirs, the Apis borussia, &c. The circumstance that these yellow bees are only to be found in the most perfect condition on the borders of Graubunden, in the Veltlin and Tessin, and that, the farther one goes from the Alps, the less handsome they are found; as for example in Nice; until they are entirely lost in lower Italy in the black species. This circumstance speaks for itself, that the yellow Alp-bees have been, through the glaciers,[2] unsurmountably separated from the black bees on this side of the Alps, and could preserve their race in original purity, while they might and could mix more, by latter gradual spreading, in lower Italy, Venice, Genoa and Nice with other kinds. We must therefore look for the original in Switzerland, and can call them with as much right Apis helvetica as the Genoese calls them Apis ligustica.
[2] The assertions of many German bee-cultivators that the Italian bee has German blood, as not even the Alps, like a Chinese wall, would prevent them from mixing with German bees, may sound very well and comprehensible on paper, but the matter would be quite changed if such a biographer would take the trouble to make, on the spot, inquiries which would present a scientific basis-. The last German place from the Julier-pass is called Stalla, between which place and Poschiavo (a distance of fifty miles) there are no bees. In May, and sometimes to the end of the month, the road leads from Stalla by the Julier-pass (nine miles), often through snow, then Oberengadien is passed (where not a single bee exists), and then through the Bernina-pass which demands a march, in the snow, of about fifteen miles, and passes are the lowest points for passage.
Now, I should like to see that swarm of bees that could take its wedding-flight from Stalla to Poschiavo over two mountains covered with snow (for the snow does not melt in June, and even in July and August the temperature is so low that every bee would perish) for the purpose of mating with the nearest borderers in Poschiavo. The same may be said of the entire chain of passes, on the Bernhardin, Gotthard, Splugen, Lukmanier, nowhere for thirty miles round is a bee to be found, for they cannot exists where, through the neighbourhood of the glaciers, the air is so cooled down. There is an end to the insect-world, and we may be sure that it has not entered into the mind of an Italian to import a hive from German-Switzerland, by which German blood may have been brought into Italy.
If the latter name were correct, they must have spread from Genoa, the former ligurian shore, into Upper Italy, and by gradual removal from their Genoese home, they could not gain in beauty of race, but must have degenerated in proportion the farther they went from their native country, &c. But this is not so. Their seat is the extreme north of Italy; that is, the Italian Switzerland, there they have preserved their purity.
The proofs of an argument must not be fetched from the moon. A nationality is never found on the borders, but in the centre of a country.
Only a short time ago it was asserted in the Bee Gazette of Eichstedt, that their cell construction is not larger than that of the black bee; but that is another erroneous assertion which only proves that the author of such a natural history either never handled a pure Italian bee; or, like a great many more ink-wasters, hatched something in the study which is nowhere to be found in nature.
It does not require the use of spectacles to find a difference.
The cubic contents of an Italian bee-cell is larger by thirty per cent, and the width is one-fifteenth more than that of the German cell. If, therefore, Italian bees are bred through several generations in German cells, the bees must ultimately degenerate and become smaller.
Now as it has pleased some naturalists to name them Apis ligustica, I cannot conceive why we should not rebaptise them, as soon as we have arrived at the conviction that our researches have been more in accordance with nature. Therefore courage, and in future.
Yellow Alp-bee, or, if necessary, that it should be latin, Apis helvetia, or helvetica (we are not good latin scholars).