70 PARTHENOGENESIS 



trious and better-tempered than the German Bees. These 

 latter properties are also the cause of the Italian Bees having 

 become so much liked amongst us, and of so great a demand 

 having recently arisen for them, so that Berlepsch found him- 

 self under the necessity of declaring publicly*, that " If the 

 Italian good-tempered, industrious race, with its beautiful colour 

 is to be kept pure and stereotyped, perhaps even improved 

 Dzierzon and [must be left in peace for at least one summer" 



It is a well-known fact, that by the crossing of different races 

 of a species of animal, hybrid forms are produced, which unite 

 in various ways certain characters of the two individuals of 

 different races w r hich were employed for the production of such 

 race-hybrids. It was natural to suppose that in the Bees, the 

 production of such race-hybrids must be combined with very 



veyed over the mountains, in order to make use of the difference of colour 

 which occurs between the rusty-yellow Italian Bees and the unicolorous dark 

 Swiss and German Bees in his observations. In the following year he per- 

 ceived that his Italian Bees degenerated in the mother-hive, a part of the new 

 brood being quite Italian ; whilst another part, on the contrary, appeared more 

 or less like the Swiss Bees. From this phenomenon Baldenstein correctly 

 concluded that the young Italian mother-bees must have copulated with a 

 Swiss male bee, and certainly outside the hive : this production of hybrids 

 would not have taken place if the young Italian queens had copulated in the 

 mother-hive, where they met with a sufficiency of true Italian drones. Balden- 

 stein further mentions (Bienenzeitung , 1851, p. 81) that those Italian mother- 

 bees, when he received them, were already four years old, and lived with him 

 for three years more, therefore in all seven years ; they always produced true 

 Italian Bees, by which it is proved that these queens required no fresh copula- 

 tion after the first one. 



Incited by these interesting observations of Baldenstein's (see also the 

 Bienenzeitung, 1853, p. 11), Dzierzon in February 1853 procured a bee-hive 

 of the true Italian race (see Bienenzeitung, 1852, p. 204 ; and 1853, p. 40) 

 from Madame Adele von Prollius, a zealous Apiarian at Mira near Venice, 

 from which stock at Carlsmarkt (in Silesia) the other German Be.e-keepers 

 might be provided with Italian Bees, by the observations of which such im- 

 portant scientific results have been obtained. For the various reports of the 

 breeding of Italian Bees, see the Bienenzeitung for the years 1854 and 1855, 

 and also the essay in that Journal for 1856, p. 1, in which Dzierzon discusses 

 the question, Is the Italian kind of Bee found by experience to be of the 

 same importance for practice as for theory ? And, above all, read the im- 

 portant communications of Berlepsch upon the Italian Bees (Bienenzeitung, 

 1856, p. 3). * Bienenzeitung, 1856, p. 6. 



