112 ITALIAN BEES. 



breeding for successive generations among his horses, cattle or fowls; 

 but no attention, or but little, was paid to this by bee-keepers, until 

 very recently. In tho primitive condition of our forests, and in earlier 

 times, the very nature and instincts of the honey bee, prevented in- 

 jury from this source. The woods had not yet been cut down, nor be- 

 come familiar to the tread of man. Swarms of bees from different 

 settlements, and of distinct blood, became near neighbors, as they em- 

 igrated to the woods and found homes in the hollow trees. Thus 

 strengthened physically by constant foreign mixture, and stimulated by 

 the great blossoms in unfelled forest trees, the westward march of the 

 honey bee, in his colonization of the forests, was far more rapid than 

 that of the squatter or the emigrant. Although man, the Indian, and 

 the bear, attracted by the accumulated stores, proved alike — the enemy 

 of the hive, the honey bee continued to thrive and increase, until under 

 changed conditions, a deterioration naturally succeeded from destruc- 

 tion of natural pasturage, and injury from in-and-in breeding. 



"As civilization advanced, and men owned small sections of wood- 

 land every part of it became well-known to the owner or to the ubiquit- 

 ous hunter. In such communities every ' bee-tree ' was soon marked and 

 destroyed. Thus all prospects of [new blood, naturally from emigrat- 

 ing swarms, was destroyed, as colonizing swarms in the woods decreased, 

 either from lack of suitable trees in well settled communities, or from 

 speedy destruction by those who sought their stores. 



" Superstitious notions on the part of old fashioned bee-keepers tend- 

 ed greatly to augument the difficulty. If a man wished to make a start 

 in bees he must either steal a hive from the nearest neighbor, or get it 

 from the woods nearby, for it was generally thought the bees be moved 

 but a small distance. The result was that the bees in any one vicinity 

 continued to in'ersase without new blood. In many places the distanct 



