452 THE ITALIAN BEE. 



an unimpregnated young queen, and also into those hives 

 which contained many drones, he caused the workers and 

 drones to issue in great numbers, and among them the 

 queens from several hives. These latter soon returned with 

 evident marks of impregnation. This was continued till the 

 16th of September, when, after a few days absence, he 

 found that the drones had been expelled from all his colonies, 

 and an end thus put to his efforts for that season. 



It is a remarkable fact that an Italian queen, impregnated 

 by a common drone, and a common queen impregnated by 

 an Italian drone do not produce workers of a uniform in- 

 termediate cast, or hybrids ; but some of the workers bred 

 from the eggs of each queen will be purely of the Italian, 

 and others as purely of the common race, only a few of 

 them indeed being apparently hybrids. Berlepsch also had 

 several bastardized queens, which at first produced Italian 

 workers exclusively, and afterwards common workers as 

 exclusively. Some such queens produced fully three-fourths 

 Italian workers ; others, common workers in the same pro- 

 portion. Nay, he states that he had one beautiful orange- 

 yellow bastardized Italian queen, which did not produce a 

 single Italian worker, but only common workers, perhaps a 

 shade lighter in color. The drones, however, produced by 

 a bastardized Italian queen, are uniformly of the Italian 

 race, and this fact, besides demonstrating the truth of Dzier- 

 zon's theory, renders the preservation and perpetuation of 

 the Italian race, in its purity, entirely feasible in any country 

 where they may be introduced. 



Considerable difficulty has been encountered, even by ex- 

 perienced Apiarians, in inducing a colony of common bees, 

 deprived of its queen, to accept an Italian queen in her 

 stead ; and many failures have occurred, involving the loss 

 of the offered queen, and causing grievous disappointment. 



