M»j 10, 1877. ] 



JOUBNAL OF HOBTICULTUBE AND COTTAGE GABDENBB. 



357 



oepted, it is my intention still to prepare some hives for it, that 

 Beveral £;entlemen will eventually unite in an effort to have a 

 fair and friendly contest between hives and bees of varioas 

 kinds. If the competiug hives be placed in a good neighbour- 

 hood for honey, and be fnvoured with fine weather, the results 

 will, I believe, be highly instructive, and, on being published, do 

 more to advance bee-keeping than many bee and honey shows. 



Some of the readers of this Journal know that a challenge 

 ending with these words, *' Come on if you dare," has been 

 given to me. The gentleman who gives the challenge wishes to 

 have his hives under his own care and control, so that the ad- 

 vantages of manipulation may be fully realised. It appears to 

 me that his proposed trial would settle nothing. Even if his 

 conditions were reasonable, it is not at all likely that any peace- 

 loving person would accept a challenge given otherwise than iu 

 a friendly manner. — A. Pettigkew. 



THE ITALIAN ALP BEE. 



In those pages which so interestingly record " A Detonshibe 

 Bee-keeper's" early aspirations to possess the Apis ligustioa, 

 its arrival in England oo August 5th, 1859, its dissemination 

 from the Devon apiary of the late Mr. T. W. Woodbury all over 

 the United Kingdom and even the antipodes, the good character 

 borne to the newcomer from far and near — to the advanced api- 

 arian familiar with all this it must seem a work of superero- 

 gation, some fifteen years after, to begin rewriting that good 

 character. But unfortunately "old times are changed, old 

 manners gone." A new school of apiculture has arisen in the 

 interim which openly teaches retrogression : the big straw skep, 

 the boxes from the grocer's shop, and the noli-me-tangere system 

 of bee-management are pronounced the acme of perfection. This 

 new school has refused to give the Italian a trial, and cannot 

 perceive the influence of the yellow-jackets on the longevity of 

 the workers, the distance to which the bees fly to forage, at 

 which the queen bee mates and to which drone influence extends 

 — sufficient of itself to cause the name of Woodbury their intro- 

 ducer to descend to latest posterity; while this same new school 

 tarnish (let us hope unwittingly) that honoured mime by in- 

 sinnating that the Italian is the best "only to sell." The 

 fashion is now entering on another phase, and competitive tests 

 are called for which every intelligent bee-keeper has tested for 

 himself long ago, and which others by the expenditure of a 

 few shillings for a queen can satisfy themselves of at any time. 

 The lack of enterprise betrayed by many is evinced by the loud 

 and oft-repeated call, Where is the superiority of the Italian ? 

 Echo has only answered, Where? Emboldened by the silence 

 of others " W. J. C." presumes to answer the question by a 

 reported conversation with no less an authority than the late 

 Mr. Woodbury, to the effect that but for gentleness the Italian 

 was no whit superior to our old aborigines. When matters have 

 reached this climax it behoves someone to come forward to 

 refute such misleading statements; and as one of Mr. Wood- 

 bury's original subscribers for the propagation of the Italian, 

 I can very easily set that matter at rest by quoting the following 

 paragraph from page 18 of his treatise, " Bees and Bee-keeping." 

 After adducing numerous instances of their superiority for pro- 

 lificness and large honey harvests " forced upon me " through 

 them, he concludes as follows — " 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 Lignrian honey bee infinitely superior in every respect to 

 the only species that we have hitherto been acquainted with." 



Whatever value my testimony on this subject may possess it is 

 at least disinterested, as I have never imported an Italian queen 

 for sale. My sympathies, too, at first were rather against the 

 foreigner, though certainly not to the extent of refusing to give 

 it a fair trial. And did it come and at once conquer? Anything 

 but that. My first stock brought but destruction in its train, 

 being badly infected with foul brood before Mr.Woodbury had dis- 

 covered the cause of his dwindling apiary. After a time a second 

 stock was procured; again the fell destroyer appeared, and 

 once more I became a bankrupt in the beo way ; yet another 

 was obtained to Italianise my third stock, and all went well. 

 After passing through such an ordeal sufficient to disgust many 

 a one, my opinion of the value of the Italian bee may best be 

 drawn from the f 4Ct that I cannot remember the number of years 

 since a black bee was bred in my apiary. 



After careful study and comparison of both varieties I have 

 come to the conclusion that the value of the Italian consists in 

 its beauty, proliQcness, power, activity, and, to my view the 

 greatest of all, fresh blood. Let us look at these points. 



1, Beauty. — No one who has seen an Italian bee I presume 

 doubts this. Place an Italian and a black bee side by side on a 

 window-pane or compare them on a landing board and decide ; 

 again, the bee-keeper who has never witnessed a flight of young 

 yellow-jackets disport themselves with almost tire-fly radiance 

 amongst their more sombre sisters in the clear bright sunshine 

 of a spring day has a sight still in store for him. 



2, ProUflcness. — This is a point about as difficult to gainsay as 



the former, and I need not enlarge on it farther than merely 

 point to the first stock of these bees which reached Scotland 

 — an Italian queen placed at the head of common bees, and in 

 one season multiplied into seven, having thrown three swarms, 

 the first of which swarmed once and the second twice. The 

 last swarm weighed 4 lbs. So rapid a rate of increase was pro- 

 nounced at the time to be unparalleled in the history of Scottish 

 bee-keeping. 



3, Power. — That the blacks go down before the Italians is un- 

 questionable. Could space be here affurded for illustration, 

 many a painful instance rises to the mind's eye of the utter 

 destruction to which some apiaries were subjected from the ex- 

 pertness with which the Italian destroyed the black. 



4, Activity. — Anyone who has possessed the Italian must have 

 been struck with their quick agile movements as compared with 

 the blacks. They are first on the wing, first to scent the new 

 flower, first to alight on the treasure trove; indeed, I early 

 formed the opinion that our northern region was congenial 

 and in keeping with their alpine home, where Mr. Hermann 

 tells they thrive to an altitude of 4500 feet above sea level, and 

 in the warmer south of Italy they are not found. A leading farmer 

 of our county — whose better-half, during a recent very poor 

 honey season, exhibited the premier super from an Italian 

 stock — was interrogated if it were due to the superiority of the 

 harvesters. His reply was he knew nothing about bees, gave 

 them as wide a berth as possible ; but one thing he would vouch 

 for — these yellow customers were first out on his fields in the 

 morning. The early bird caught the worm ; he supposed that 

 was about it. 



5, Fresh Blood. — In an article which appeared in this Journal 

 last season (No. 788) entitled "Breeding Bees," bearing the 

 initials " A. P.," the startling announcement was made that 

 " in-and-in breeding has gone on for generations and ages." and 

 " the conduct of both bees and drones of every hive indicates 

 that in-acd-in breeding is a law amongst them, not an excep- 

 tion," whereas the very opposite holds good in all animated 

 nature. I am not aware that wo have a more beautiful illustra- 

 tion than in the honey bee of the care provided to avert the evils 

 attendant on forming alliances within the degrees of consan- 

 guinity, and as such I have always pointed it out to all stock- 

 owningand poultry-keeping friends. I really thought the merest 

 tyro in bee-keeping was aware that for this very purpose the 

 queen bee invariably mates without the hive. She is impelled 

 to a far flight ; of this I was not in ignorance before the advent 

 of the Italian, for I had often stood watch iu hand speculating 

 during the fifteen to twenty minutes the young queens were 

 absent on such trips. Mr. Woodbury then proposed in the most 

 fraternal manner to distribute the Italian for a small nomi- 

 nal charge amongst his subscribers, and in order to preserve 

 these young queens pure from the black drone influence of 

 other apiaries he advised isolation, placing them fully a mile 

 from other bees. I then predicted the shipwreck of the adven- 

 ture, which unfortunately was too literally fulfilled. Conclusive 

 evidence of what I have here stated may be drawn from the fact 

 that during all the years I have possessed the Italian bee, my 

 apiary being well stocked for most part with strong non-swarm- 

 ing colonies, in every ease with an imported queen or daughter 

 of such at their head, and consequently many pure-bred Italian 

 drones, yet notwithstanding I only once succeeded in obtaining 

 pure impregnation, and that could scarcely be classed as an ex- 

 ception to the unvarying rule, because that young queen was 

 bred in early spring long before black drones appeared, and her 

 fertilisation so far as my knowledge could extend was dependant 

 without a choice on Italian drones from another of my colonies, 

 the queen of which, if I remember rightly, was a drone-breeder. 



As a set-off for my disappointment I made the invaluable dis- 

 covery that the first cross between the young Italian queen and 

 black drone was a larger, more poweiful, and much more in- 

 dustrious insect than the pure-bred of either variety ; in proof 

 of this I need only point to the honey harvests which I have 

 been enabled to reap in hives possessing amplest facilities for 

 their so doing. I had better at the same time state that such 

 cross I found much more irascible than either pure-bred bee, 

 and console myself with the sound advice tendered me in no- 

 vitiate days by my old preceptor — " Aye, buy the wicked skep ; 

 they're far the best honey-gatherers." 



The potency of the spell exercised by the first cross is ap- 

 parent and well understood in larger stock than our favourites; 

 for instance, we do not depend for the beef and mutton supply 

 with which to feed the teeming masses of our population on 

 either the high-bred shorthorn or the Leicester, but to crosses 

 from them ; and in like manner every poultry-keeper knows 

 it is not his pure-bred fowls but the first cross which fills the 

 egg basket. I disapprove of all mongrels, and carefully weed 

 them out. 



From what I have written it may be supposed that the prowess 

 of the Italian in love cannot be maintained equally as in war, 

 but such is far from the case, although it does seem to be 

 ordered that the more agile Italian princess far outstrips her 

 lazier drones in their flights, and forms alliances with the dark 



