G8 PARTHENOGENESIS 



duction of hybrid Bees at a very recent period, since the Italian 

 race of Bees has been introduced into Germany by Dzierzon 

 and Berlepsch. The so-called Italian Bees form no separate 

 species, but must only be regarded as a variety of the Apis 

 mellifica. These Italian Bees are distinguished at the first 

 glance by the leather-yellow colour of their abdomen from the 

 unicoiorous blackish-brown German Bees. In the females and 

 workers of the Italian race, the first, second and third abdominal 

 segments appear of a rusty-yellow colour {colore rufo-ferrugineo) 

 and margined with black ; this black margin is very narrow on 

 the first segment, broader on the second, and broadest on the 

 third. The Italian drones have the middle of the hinder margin 

 of the second, third and fourth, and often that of the fifth 

 abdominal segment broadly rusty-yellow, by which the blackish- 

 brown abdomen of these drones appears to be furnished on the 

 back with from three to four rusty-brown transverse bands, of 

 which the first is the broadest. The German drones, on the 

 contrary, have the abdominal segments only narrowly margined 

 with rusty -yellow*. According to the statements of Dzierzon 



* This variety of Apis mellifica has already been for an extraordinary 

 length of time indigenous in Italy and the South of Europe generally, for 

 Virgil, and before him Aristotle, mention these rusty-yellow Bees in their 

 descriptions of the ceconomy of Bees. But unicoiorous dark Bees must also 

 have occurred constantly amongst the variegated or rusty-yellow spotted 

 Bees, as both authors also speak of black Bees. In Aristotle's De Ani- 

 malibus Historic, lib. v. cap. 18. 2, we find,—" Regum autem genera duo ; 

 praestantior rufus : alter niger et varius magis." And further, lib. v. cap. 19. 1, 

 " In genere apum praestantissima quae parva, rotunda, varia ; alteram genus 

 est oblongum et vespae (Anthrenae) simile : tertium furem vocant : niger is, 

 alvo lata. Quartus fuscus, omnium maximus, sine aculeo, ignavus." The 

 verses of Virgil, in which {Georgicon, lib. iv. 91) he declares the variegated 

 Bees to be more valuable than the black ones, are well known : — 



" Alter erit maculis auro squalentibus ardens : 

 Nam duo sunt genera : hie melior, insignis et ore, 

 Et rutilis clarus squamis ; ille horridus alter 

 Desidia, latamque trahens inglorius alvum. 

 Ut binae regum facies, ita corpora plebis. 

 Namque aliae turpes horrent : ceu pulvere ab alto 

 Quum venit, et sicco terram spuit ore viator, 

 Aridus ; elucent aliae, et fulgore coruscant, 

 Ardentes auro et paribus lita corpora guttis. 

 Haec potior suboles." 



