BEE MANUAL. 25 



CHAPTER II. 



THE HONEY BEE: ITS VAEIETIES AND 

 DISTEIBUTION. 



There are many species of the genus Apis, or Bee, but only 

 one which stores honey in such a manner as to be practically 

 useful to man, and which Linnaeus distinguished by the name 



APIS MELLTFICA 



The particular variety of this species known to Linnaeus was 

 the Black, or German bee. Since the beginning of the present 

 century, other varieties were observed and described by Spinola 

 and others, and were classed at first as distinct species. In the 

 year 1862, Dr. A. Gerstaecker, of Berlin, first published the 

 results of his investigations upon the 



"GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF THE HONEV-BEE AND 

 ITS VARIETIES," 



from which I take the following condensed extracts. He says 

 that up to within some ten years of the time when he was 

 writing, bee-keepers knew only one sort of honey-bee — that 

 which had been reared for ages — the Apis mellifica of Linnaeus ; 

 but they then (in 1862) distinguished the German from the 

 Italian bee. The latter had, in fact, been noticed in the 

 beginning of this century, by Spinola and by Latreille, as a 

 separate species of the genus Apis, and was named by the for- 

 mer zoologist, Apis ligustica ; nevertheless it proved to be only 

 a coloured variety of the same species ; the size, as well as the 

 structural peculiarities of the insect, being the same in every 

 respect, and the two sorts admitting of 'cross-breeding to any 

 extent whereas, if they belonged to different species, the off- 

 spring would, in all probability, consist of unprolific hybrids. 

 The knowledge of the practical apiarist was, at all events, then 

 confined to these two varieties of the honey-bee, and they were 

 supposed to be indigenous almost exclusively to Europe, the 



