320 THE HIVE AND HONEX-BEE. 



parent-hive, when the first swarm and old queen left, were of ths 

 Italian stock exclusively, few of this kind remained in the Fall, 

 and none survived the Wiutet 4. The young queen is impreg- 

 nated soon after she is established in a colony, and continues fer- 

 tile during life. Were this not so, the genuine, queens would not 

 have continued to produce pure brood during those seven succes- 

 sive years. 5. The queen leaves the hive to meet the drones. 

 If not, it would scarcely have happened, that all the young queens 

 bred in those seven years, with only one exception, were impreg- 

 nated by common drones, and produced a bastard progeny. 6. The 

 old queen regularly leaves with the first swarm, or the genuine 

 Italian brood would not invariably have been the product of the 

 swarm, but occasionally, at least, of the parent colony, which 

 never happened in all that time. 



" These observations and inferences impelled Dzierzon — who 

 had previously ascertained that the cells of the Italian and com- 

 mon bees were of the same size — to make an efibrt to procure the 

 Italian bee ; and, by the aid of the Austrian Agricultural Society 

 at Vienna,* he succeeded in obtaining, late in February, 1853, a 

 colony from Mira, near Venice. On the following day, he trans- 

 ferred the combs and bees into one of his own hives, and, when 

 the season opened, placed the hive on a stand in his Apiary, and 

 screwed it fast, that it might not be stolen. He never moved it 

 during the ensuing Summer, but took from it combs with workei 

 and drone-brood; at regular intervals, supplying their place, with 

 empty comb. In this way, he succeeded in rearing nearly fifty 

 young queens, about 0ne-half of which were i mpregnated by Italian 

 drones, and produced genuine brood. The other half produced a 

 bastard progeny. He continued thus to multiply queens by the 

 removal of brood, till the parent-stock, and several of his artificial 

 colonies, suddenly killed off their ' drones, on the 25th of June. 

 • The bees of the original colony still labored very assiduous-ly. but 



* Some of tie Governments of Europe have recently taken great interest in dis- 

 seminating among their people a Icnowledge of Dziei-zon's system of Beo-Cultuve. 

 Prussia furnishes annually a number of' persons from different parts of the King- 

 dom, with the means of acquiring a practical knowledge of this system ; while the 

 Bavarian G-overnrhent has prescribed instruction in Dzierzon's theory and practicn 

 of bee-oulture, as a part of the regular course of studies in its teachers' Semioariea 



