THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



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by which the bhickish brown abdomen of these 

 drones appears to bo furnished on the back with 

 from tlirec to lour nisty-brown transverse bands, 

 of whicli the first is the broadest. The German 

 drones on the contrary, have tlie abdominal seg- 

 ments only narrowly margined witli rusty-yel- 

 low. According to the statements of Dzierzon 

 and Berlepsch, Avh« have done especial service 

 to the brecdiiig and diffusion of the Italian bees 

 in Germany, these golden-yellow bees are not 

 only more beautiful, but also more industrious 

 and' better tempered than the German bees. 

 These latter properties are also the cause of tlie 

 Italian bees having become so much liked amongst 

 us, and of so great a demand liaving recently 

 arisen for them, so that Berlepsch found himself 

 under the necessity of declaring publicly, that 

 '•Hf the Italian f/ood-tempercd, industrious race, 

 with its beautiful color is to be kept pure and 

 stereoti/pcd, perhaps even improved, Dzierzon and 

 I must be left in peace f)r at least one summer.'''' 

 It is a well-knoMai fact that by the crossing of 

 different races of a species of animal, hybrid 

 forms are produced, winch unite in various ways 

 certain characters of the two individuals of dif- 

 ferent races which were employed for the pro- 

 duction of such hybrids. It was natural to sup- 

 pose that in tlie bees the production of such race 

 hybrids must be combined with peculiar modifi- 

 cations. If Dziej'zon's theory proved correct, 

 w^e might beforehand expect that by the copula- 

 tion of a unicolorous blackish-brown German 

 and a reddisli-brown Italian bee, the mixture of 

 the two races would only be expressed in the 

 hybrid females and workers, but not in the 

 drones, which as proceeding from unfecundated 

 eggs must remain purely German or purely Ital- 

 ian, according as the queen selected for the pro- 

 duction of hybrids belonged to the German or 

 the Italian race. In fact the expectations of the ^ 

 apiarians were not disappointed. It is true that 

 in these crossings of the races many remarkable 

 occurrences, such as also happen contrary to 

 expectation, in the crossing of our larger domes- 

 ticanimals were still necessarilj' left unexplained. 

 According to Eerlepsch's observations, 1. Many 

 Italian mothers produce partly black and partly 

 variegated hees under all circumstances; that is 

 t) say, whether they have been fecundated by a 

 German or an Italian drone; 2. Many Italian 

 mothers produce onl}' variegated bees when they 

 arc fertilized by an Italian drone, but variegated 

 and black ones mixed when fertilization is ef- 

 fected 1)3' a German drone; and 3. Many Italian 

 mothers produce only variegated bees under all 

 circumstances; that is to saj'^, whether they are 

 fertilized by an Italian or a German di-one. Such | 

 true Italian queens, adds Berlepscli, produce | 

 Italian bees from the' very first, when fertilized 

 bj'an Italian drone; but on the contrary, when 

 fertilized by a German drone, they also produce 

 German bees at first for a longer or shorter time. 

 Here I must insist upon the fact that these 

 statements of Von Berlepsch only refer to the 

 production of workers and female bees, but by 

 no means to drones. He endeavored to explain 

 these surprising and singular facts, which re- 

 posed upon two j'cars' experience, in the follow- 

 ing manner. He refers to the existence of the 

 appendicular gland so intimately connected with 



the seminal receptacle, to which I had already in 

 the year 1837 ascribed theofDce of preserving l;y 

 its secretion the seminal mass remaining for 

 months in the seminal c;ipsulc in a frcsli state. 

 Berlepsch, starting from this view, now tliouglit 

 that the maternal liquor of the ajipendicular 

 gland constantly penetrating (into the seminal 

 receptacle) gradually permeates iJie spermatozoa 

 to such an extent that their paternal elements 

 are overpowered by the maternal ones. If the 

 mother bee is of pure Italian blood, none but va- 

 riegated bees must be produced from her fertilized 

 eggs as soon as the spermatozoa derived from a 

 German drone arc sufliciently permeated; but on 

 the contrary, if the mother be not purely Ittdian, 

 black bees will always remain. This conjecture 

 which I only quote here for the present as a con- 

 jecture, without saying anything for or again.st 

 it, Berlepsch also endeavored to support by the 

 behavior of a German queen, which being fer- 

 tilized by an Italian drone, ])roduced last year 

 variegated bees amongst the black, but this year 

 only black bees. 



In all these observations with reference to the 

 propagation and multiplication of the Italian race 

 of bees, the brood of drones always turned out 

 purely Italian or purely German, even Avlien 

 crossings occurred between German and Italian 

 bees, according as the queen subjected to crossing 

 belonged to the Italian or the German race. Bui 

 in order to attain certainty witli regard to these 

 phenomena, the observations to be made for this 

 purpose must be performed with the greatest 

 care. The observations will have to be made 

 with individuals of perfectly pure race, which 

 will not always be obtained with ease and cer- 

 tainty, since the breeding of the Italian swarms 

 side by side with the German bee-hives is already 

 carried on amongst us to a very great extent. 

 How difficult it may be to find a peril'ctly genuine 

 and pure queen for sucli experiments, is shown 

 by the mixtures of the two races of bees in ques- 

 tion, observed by Berlepsch and already referred 

 to. I can, therefore, lay no very great stress 

 upon an observation which Dzierzon made upon 

 an Italian queen, and which, as I have already 

 indicated, has made this cautions apiarian doubt- 

 ful of his own theory. This isolated case, in 

 which, moreover, some circumstance might pro- 

 bably have remained unnoticed, cannot over- 

 thi'ow a proposition, the correctness of which has 

 been confirmed in so striking a manner by a 

 number of other observations. How Dzierzon 

 was surprised by some such disturbing accident 

 appears from his own statement, which I will 

 givehere literally, iu order to show that Dzier- 

 zon is not one of those who cannot be led away 

 from a preconceived oi)inion, whether it be right 

 or wrong. His words* are as follows: 



"Continued observations of the liybrid hives 

 must be no less adapted to raise the veil more 

 and more to penetrate into the obscurity and 

 finally bring the mysterious truth to ligiit. If 

 the drone egg does not require fertilization, Ital- 

 ian mothers must always produce Italian drones, 

 and German mothers German drones, even when 

 they have been fertilized by drones of the other 

 race. The Silcs'an Apiarian (Bienenfrcund) 



*Seo Bienen/reund aiu SchJesien, 1854, No. S, pajfe 03. 



