§ v.] THE ITALIAN OR LIGURIAN BEE. 43 



comb-building, more industrious and honey-yielding, 

 more courageous in defence of its stores, ahd prompter 

 in expelling the drones. The Baron examines these and 

 other assertions one by one, and declares emphatically 

 that, after a long course of experience, he has not found 

 them true in a single particular. He calls the bee " the 

 Italian humbug," and sums up as follows: "While it 

 may perhaps be distinguished from our own by a some- 

 what sHghter disposition to sting, but, on the other hand, 

 it begins building drone comb and raising numbers of 

 drones in the first year, and its queens grow unfertile so 

 early, and that mostly at so inopportune a time, it stands 

 manifestly inferior to our own in a relation of economic 

 utility, and has therefore for us no practical value at 

 all."* 



Though we are unshaken in our adhesion to the Italian 

 bee by these opposite views, it is impossible to (treat them 

 as beneath consideration. They are not a mere preju- 

 dice, for the Baron was at first as much prepossessed in 

 the strangers' favour as any one. But it would be still 

 less possible to set aside on their account the united 

 testimony of Dzierzon, Langstroth, and a host of others 

 who are above delusion on such a point. How then 

 can we account for this one notable divergence ? In the 

 first place, much of Von Berlepsch's data are negative 



* In our previous editions Von Berlepsch's views were cited as 

 s\XQia^y favourable to the Italian bee. The change is his own, and 

 he now makes full recantation of his " error.'' 



