34 THE BEE-KEEPER’S MANUAL. 
of black hairs—which were s0 distinguished from 
their very birth. Still greater curiosities have been 
come upon which are all white or with white patches; 
others again that are reddish; drones with fiery red 
eyes, beautiful red heads, or a blue tint that disap- 
pears after the first flight; light fox-coloured drones, 
or black with rings like Italians; lastly, queens with 
yellow or red rings, or which are nearly or quite 
black. 
THE ITALIAN OR LIGURIAN BEE. 
This variety of the honey-bee was first imported 
into England in 1859, Messrs. Neighbour and the 
late Mr. Woodbury dividing the honour of having 
been the original recipients.* It has been rather 
unfortunate in its acquirement of a name, for 
* As our author played a part in the introduction of this bee into 
England, it may be not unaccept ble to our readers to learn some fur- 
ther particulars. He was at the time chief apiarian correspondent to 
the Cottage Gardener (now the Journal of Horticulture), and on July 
15, 1859, there appeared in its columns a communication from hin, 
stating that a friend—whom we learn from “The Apiary” to have 
been on: of the Messrs. Neighbour—had just shown him a letter in 
which a M. Hermann, of Tamins-by-Chur, Canton Grison, offered to 
supply a new variety of the honey-bee, which he recommended as 
hizhly superior to the common one. A week or two later we find 
in the same paper a long and interesting letter from Mr. Woodbury 
(“A Devonsh re Bee Keeper”), in which he states how he had been 
fired by this announcement, and had promptly applied for one of the 
new queens to be sent to himself. In a most entertaining manner he 
describes the receipt and introduction of the yellow queen and her 
“thousand people’—how he united these with a queenless stock of ten 
or twelve times that p pulation, and how a murderous battle ensued in 
which “ British valour was triumphant” and the over-matched and 
travel-worn Italians were all slain ¢o @ bee, with the single and _all- 
important exception of the gueen--this last fact illustrating in a most 
striking egree the intense feeling of regard for the royal mother which 
is engraven in the minds of our insects. Several letters follow at inter- 
vals, all of which well repay perusal. 
