DEVOTED TO SCIENTIFIC BEE-CULTURE AND THE PRODUCTION AND SALE OF PURE HONEY. 



VOL. XVII. 



CHICAG-O. ILL., MAY 18, 1881. 



No. 20. 



Published every Wednesday, by 



THOMAS G. NEWMAN, 



Editor and Proprietor, 

 974 WEST MADISON ST., CHICAGO, ILL. 



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Translated for the American Bee Journal. 



The Apiary of Mons. Fiorini. 



CHAS. DADANT. 



By request of the editor of the Bee 

 Journal I translate the following very 

 interesting editorial article from L'Api- 

 coltore : - 



" Who has not heard of Fiorini, the 

 enterprising bee-keeper who last year 

 made a trip to the Orient expressly 

 to secure the direct importation of the 

 far-famed bee from Cyprus Island. 

 As soon as he had returned from his 

 journey, in January, 1880, he informed 

 me of the successful issue of his under- 

 taking, and invited me to come and see 

 the colonies he had brought with him. 

 I hastened to Monselice, a town on the 

 road between Padua and Bologna,where 

 Mr. Fiorini resides. At Padua I met 

 Mr. Sartori,who,returning from Venice 

 was on his way to Monselice. Major 

 Hrushka, the inventor of the honey ex- 

 tractor, was to be one of the party, but, 

 to our sorrow, at the hour of starting 

 Mr. Sartori had to depart alone. From 

 Padua one hour by railroad brought us 

 to Monselice, where Mr. Fiorini came to 

 meet us. We went to his home, and im- 

 mediately turned our attention to the 

 beautifui Cyprian bees. 



" Mr. Fiorini, with difficulty, had suc- 

 ceeded in gathering together 8 colonies 

 at Lanarca,as he narrated in the descrip- 

 tion of his journey (see American Bee 

 Journal for Aug., 1880, page 373). 

 Six of these colonies were put in small 

 boxes especially prepared tor the jour- 

 ney, and two were in their original 

 hives or earthen jars. Yet, although 

 Mr. Fiorini used every precaution to 

 strengthen the poorest of them, some 

 were yet very weak ; the winter being 

 unusually cold, he experienced great 

 difficulty to bring them through the 

 winter. These colonies were placed at 

 a southern window, to allow them to go 



out and discharge their feces, so neces- 

 sary after such a long confinement. 

 Every evening these colonies were 

 brought into a warm room. Notwith- 

 standing these precautions, two queens 

 perished, leaving but 6 colonies alive. 

 This misfortune had destroyed my hope 

 of getting some of these colonies, but 

 Mr. Fiorini was willing to keep his word, 

 and sold me two colonies, besides pre- 

 senting me one of the earthen hives 



where the queen had died 



" Mr. Fiorini had not yet thoroughly 

 examined the small colonies, hence I 

 had the opportunity of seeing 7 Cyprian 

 colonies and 5 queens. I noticed thai 

 the Cyprians, as well as the Italians, are 

 not perfectly alike in color. In fact, I 

 saw one queen much more yellow than 

 the others, and one colony where the 

 color of the workers was perceptibly 

 lighter than the copper-yellow of the 



can be distinctly seen when the worker 

 to be examined is immersed in alcohol. 

 The corslet of the Italian worker is gen- 

 erally of a uniform tinge which approx 

 imates black. There are, however, some 

 colonies of Italians in which a few of 

 the workers are adorned with the above 

 mark of the Cyprian. This mark is. 

 moreover, always smaller and of a duller 

 yellow, and, in fact, such bees are an 

 exception, at least in the locality where 

 I have had occasion to notice them 

 This mark, which in the Italian is an 

 exception, in the Cyprian, on the con- 

 trary, is a fixed characteristic. Was 

 the Italian bee original in the Orient ; or 

 is this mark, which is sometimes visible 

 on our bees, a phenomenon of atavism*. 

 Who knows ? 



" Cvprian queens have no such mark, 

 for I have not seen it either in the di- 

 rectly imported queens, or in their queen 



bees of the other Cyprian colonies. As 

 to this special color, I notice a curious 

 coincidence. It is said that the first 

 copper was found in the Island of Cy- 

 prus (a Cypro cuprum dicitur). The name 

 of Cyprian is therefore twice related to 

 these bees, since they were first noticed 

 at Cyprus, and since they are copper- 

 colored. Both of these circumstances 

 will probably perpetuate the name of 

 Cyprian to those bees, although the 

 same bees can be found in all Asia Mi- 

 nor, and in a large part of the East, as 

 we will see. The most distinct mark of 

 the workers of this kind has not yet 

 been noticed, which consists in a mark 

 of the same yellow as that of the abdo- 

 men, which, in the form of a half-moon, 

 occupies nearly all of the third ring of 

 the corslet of the worker. 



" All the full-blooded Cyprian workers 

 have this characteristic mark, which 



progeny. Every queen is without this 

 mark. This fact seems to be very sin- 

 gular. What is still more curious, is 

 that, while the color of the hair and of 

 the skin of the workers are generally 

 yellower, the queens have the rings with 

 black bands very well marked, but nar- 

 rower than in the Italian. This does 

 not mean that they are less beautiful— 

 that depends on the taste. The bee- 

 keepers, outside the Alps, think a queen 

 the more beautiful when the black color 

 is least, because the preponderance of 

 yellow is for them aguarantee of purity. 

 In the Cyprian queens both colors are, 

 it seems, more distinct. One makes the 

 other more apparent, by the contrast, 

 which prevenlsdullness, and to my taste 

 is more beautiful. I have dilated on 



•Atavism— The recurrence of the original type of 

 a species in the progeny of its varieties.— WEBSTER'S 

 Unabridged. 



these peculiarities, because some find 

 the Cyprian queens very fine, while oth- 

 ers, looking for the test of purity in the 

 increasing yellow color, find these bees 

 not so beautiful, ,nd because such a re- 

 mark can have some weighton the sales 

 of queens. 



"Mr. Fiorini, in his journey to the 

 Orient, gathered worker bees at Corfu, 

 Jaffa, Ramble, Jerusalem, Mount Oli- 

 vet, Bethlehem, St. John in the Moun- 

 tain, and Beyrout, as he narrated in I he 

 description of his journey (page 373 of 

 American Bek Journal. 1880). I ex- 

 amined these bees carefully one after 

 another* All (about" 50 in number) 

 have, like the Cyprian, the third ringof 

 the corslet yellow. All were, like the 

 Cyprian, a lit tie smaller than the Italian, 

 although having been gathered on the 

 continent, and that. too. to my mind, 

 proves that the smaller size of the Cyp- 

 rian is not the result of their inhabiting 



in island, a circumstance which gener- 

 ally influences the growth of other ani- 

 mals. I found some of these bees a little 

 more yellow than others: but I had 

 already noticed similar differences be- 

 tween the bees of the several colonies 

 imported by Mr. Fiorini, and we know 

 that it is usual among the Italian. Be- 

 sides, as all these bees were gathered in 

 the same phial and in'small numbers, I 

 was unable to know whether these small 

 differences were local and constant, or 

 only accidental. 



' "I examined the drones later. They 

 are, among the Cyprians, more beauti- 

 ful than either the queens or the work- 

 ers. The hairs of the Cyprian are 

 whitish ; three rings of the abdomen, 

 the nearest to the corslet.and sometimes 

 four, are attorned with copper yellow in 

 their upper part, and this in all the col- 

 onies, at least as far as I noticed. Yet 

 the drones, like .the queens, have not 

 the yellow mark of the workers. In the 

 Italian bees the drones are not all 

 adorned with yellow, a large part of 

 them having only some yellow marks, 

 and a greater number of them being 

 about uniformly black. 



" As I said about the Italian workers, 

 which have exceptionally the mark or 

 the Cyprian, there can be found a few 

 Italian drones, although very rarely, 

 which are as yellow as the Cyprians ; 

 yet the Cyprian drones can easily be 

 distinguished by the whitish color of 

 their hair. 



" According to some, one of the mer- 

 its of the Cyprian bees is that they are 

 less inclined to rear drones. Mr. Fiorini 

 narrated that in the 8 colonies he found 

 but about lOsquare decimeters of drone 

 cells (a square decimeter is about four 

 inchessqnare). The earthen hive which 

 he gave me while I was at Monselice, 

 had no drone cells ; yet mv observation 

 in this my first year with Cvprians. did 

 not confirm the persistence of this 

 quality. I have some reason to think 

 that the combs observed by Mr. Fiorini 

 were those of after-swarms, or of first 

 swarms who had built during a scarcity 

 of honey. 



" As to the greater or less tendency 

 to sting, 1 will wait for another year be- 

 fore pronouncing an opinion. 



" To sum up. I do not think that there 

 is the least fear of the Cyprian bees 

 taking the first rank which was conceded 

 to the Italian amongst the other races, 



•Count Qaetano Barbo. the writer of this article, 

 Is a very good microscopist.— CH. L>. 



