tt« J r ANIMAL 



STUDIES ON THE HONEY BEE, WITH SPECIAL 

 REFERENCE TO THE JAPAESE HONEY BEE. 



BV 



YoSHINOItU TOKUDA, 



Imperial Zootechiiital F;xperiment Station, Chiha, Japan. 



(With plate I & n.) 



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 (3s -.as - i{3 S5) 



INTRODUCTORY. 



Setting aside the brief accounts of the Japanese lioney bee given by the 

 Japanese writers such as Tamaki (1889) and others. Radoszkowsky (1887) was 

 the first who deals with the systematic position of the bee and regards it as 

 Apis meUifica L. \ar. japonka, as following lines show: "Elle se distingue de 

 I'abeille ordinaire en ce que les bases des segments portent des bandes formees 

 de poils couches blanchatrcs et que les segments ventraux sont dune couleur 

 pale et garni de poils long sales. Cette varietd se trouve aussi au.x environs 

 de Wladiwostok. Jokohama."'^ 



According to v-. Blttel-Reepen (1906) Apis mdlifica is classified into 3 

 subspecies: l) mdlifica proper. 2) tmicolor from Africa, and 3) the Asiatic which 

 merits the name of indica, and our native bee is regarded by him as a variety 

 of the last named subspecies, i. e. as Apis mellifica, st. indica-japotiica Rad'^ 

 This view on imtica is based chiefly upon the criterion to this variety, as point- 

 ed out by KoscHENiKow (1900 ), which coasists in the plorongation of the cubital 



1) Probably ./ is dropped between the two localities, Wladiwosock and Jokohama, by misprint 



2) V Buttei.-Reepen- (1906; says that he found in the collection from lapan in the Zoological 

 Museum of Berlin, etc., some examples of indica-peronl. 6 of indica-dncnsh and 3 of iudka- 

 japo«ica, and regards the latter as the bastard between ./*«i,>-variety and a dark variety of 

 j«a>C(7 -subspecies. 



[Trans, of Sapporo Natural History Soc. Vol. I.\, Part 1. 1924.] 



