1873.] 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



231 



A friend who keeps bees says he prefers to let his 

 bees set out on their summer location, without any 

 covering, or stopping them up. He says there will 

 just about so many die, and he prefers to have them 

 fly out and die on the snow, rather than in the hive. 

 Is this a fact ? 



And he says also, about five days before they swarm 

 the queen bee comes out and goes off and selects a 

 tree for their future home. Is this so? 



J. L. H. 



[ For the American Bee Journal.] 



Travel in Italy. 



(concluded.) 



As soon as we arrived in Borgo Priolo, we placed 

 the bees carefully in a big willow basket, and this 

 was fastened on the wagon, together with other 

 baskets containing fruits that had already been 

 loaded on it, for the purpose of starting for Milan 

 on the next day. 



During supper, the incetlatore talked with us 

 about his trade. He sells fruits every year to the 

 amount of fifteen or twenty thousand francs. I ob- 

 served that his fruits, being pressed together in his 

 large baskets and carried in a wagon without 

 springs, must necessarily arrive in rather poor con- 

 dition. He admitted this, and said that sometimes 

 he could not obtain more than half price for his 

 fruits, on account of their bad condition. I then 

 told him that it would pay him to buy two horses 

 and a spring wagon in place of his miserable equi- 

 page. He thought it would pay, and he had the 

 means to do it, but his father had done as he did 

 and he was not disposed to change his habits. 

 However, as he understood that his fruits would 

 keep better in smaller boxes, he asked Sartori to 

 send him one hundred fruit boxes, a V Americaine, 

 for trial. 



Although we had come back early from our expe- 

 dition, as I was very tired, I left Sartori with our 

 host and went to bed. The house in which I was, 

 was an old stone building with walls two feet thick, 

 and small windows, shut up with an iron grating, 

 as though the house had been built to stand a siege. 

 The kitchen was the only room provided with a 

 chimney. This chimney was ten feet broad, and to 

 prevent the enormous current of air from being felt 

 by those who warmed themselves by the fire, they 

 had built, between the door and the chimney, a wall 

 that projected six feet into the kitchen. The stairs 

 that led to the upper apartments were made of flag 

 stones five feet long and two feet broad. The room 

 in which I slept with Sartori, had two windows on 

 two opposite sides. One of the windows had glass 

 panes and the other was closed with paper. 



As we were to take the train only at half past 

 seven in the morning, I thought that I could sleep 

 longer than on the preceding nights. But the 

 incettatore woke us at one o'clock. In computing 

 the time that was necessary to go to Calcababbio 

 with the mule, I understood that we would not ar- 

 rive too soon. Our host evidently supposed that 

 we would ride on his cart ; he was not afraid of 

 overloading his mule. But we concluded that the 

 trip would be more pleasant for us if we went on 

 foot, and we started ahead. At five o'clock we ar- 

 rived at the station. It was closed. A coffee- 



house near by was open, and after having drank a 

 good cup of coffee each, we went to sleep on our 

 seats. At daylight we returned to the station, and 

 as we looked around us we ascertained that we had 

 never seen this place before. We soon found out 

 that we were not in Calcababbio, but in Casteggio, 

 on another railroad line. Luckily, there was a 

 train passing that corresponded with that of Calca- 

 babbio. Sartori sent a dispatch (price 10 cents) to 

 the incettatore, to inform him of what happened, 

 and asking him to send the queens, and three hours 

 after we arrived in Milan. 



My travels in Tessin, Upper Italy, Piedmont and 

 Lombardy permit me to form an opinion on the 

 origin of the Italian bee. To my judgment, .this 

 race did not originate from a cross between the 

 black and Egyptian bees, but is the result of the 

 improvement of the common race by the climate 

 and natural selection. Egyptian bees could not 

 modify the common race by crossing, so as to estab- 

 lish the present variety, unless some bee-keepers 

 had imported them on a large scale, for we know 

 how rapidly all trace of Italian blood disappears 

 when put in contact with a large quantity of black 

 bees, if no efforts are made to preserve it. Besides 

 it would have been necessary that not only the 

 Italians but also the Greeks had made importations 

 of Egyptian bees, for the Italian bee has existed in 

 Greece for a long time. The ancient authors speak 

 about this variety and advise to give it the prefer- 

 ence. Honey was held in great honor among the 

 ancients, as they did not manufacture sugar, and 

 bee-culture was a flourishing branch of industry, if 

 we are to judge of it by the great number of Latin 

 and Greek words, mostly Greek, that have reference 

 to the industry of bees. The different Greek dia- 

 lects have no less than fifty words derived from the 

 word meli (meli, honey.) 



The mildness of the climate of this part of 

 Europe has necessarily had, during a long period of 

 time, an influence on the black race, by perfecting 

 it. The inhabitants could not help noticing this 

 change, and comparing this new race with the 

 other. And, the authors having praised the quali- 

 ties of the new race, it is naturally probable that 

 every bee-keeper preserved from brimstone the 

 quietest and brightest bees. 



Such is, in my opinion, the origin of this beauti- 

 ful race. What induces me to think so, is the fact 

 that in the plains of Lombardy I found the bees all 

 exactly similar, i. e., all had very narrow black 

 stripes on the yellow rings of the abdomen ; and as 

 soon as I swerved from the plains into the moun- 

 tains, either in Switzerland or in Piedmont, the 

 black stripes were broader and the bees more ag- 

 gressive. At a certain distance in the mountains, 

 I found no more bees whose queens were worth 

 importing, although it was certain that they were 

 not hybrids, but the yellow rings were almost lost 

 in the black stripes. I even found, in several hives, 

 a few bees that were completely black. 



I say that I am certain that those bees were not 

 hybrids, because I cannot imagine how this hybrid- 

 ization could originate, the Alps being there with 

 their insuperable barriers. If it is objected that 

 what is insurmountable for man, may not be so for 

 winged insects, I will answer, that if the mixture 

 of the races could have taken place on one side of 



