444 THE ITALIAN BEE. 



tablished in a colony, and continues fertile during life. 

 Were this not so, the genuine queens would not have con- 

 tinued to produce pure brood during those seven successive 

 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 

 impregnated by common drones, and produced 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 pa- 

 rent colony, which never happened in all that time. 



These observations and inferences impelled Dzierzon to 

 make an effort to procure (he Italian bee ; and by the aid of 

 the Austrian Agricultural Society at Vienna, he succeeded 

 in obtaining a colony from Mira, near Venice. Meanwhile, 

 we have no further account of them in the Bienenzeitung, 

 excepting that, in No. 1, 1853, Baldenstein, in reply to an 

 inquiry from Dzierzon, stated that " the Italian bee is found 

 immediately beyond the Alps, in the Southern valleys of the 

 Grisons bordering on Italy, in Merox, in Pregell, in Pro- 

 chiavo, and then in the entire Lombardo-Venitian district of 

 Valtelin, in the district of Chiavenna, and on the borders of 

 Lake Como." He does not doubt that it occurs also in other 

 parts of Italy, but names those as places where he observed 

 it himself, and is certain it may be found. 



Dzierzon obtained his Italian colony, Feb. 19, 1853, and 

 on the following day transferred the combs and bees into 

 one of his own hives. When the season opened, he placed 

 the hive on a stand in his Apiary, and screwed it fast, lest it 

 be stolen. He never moved it during the ensuing Summer ; 

 but took from it combs with worker and drone brood, at reg- 



