BEE MANUAL. 25 
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THE HONEY BEE: ITS VARIETIES AND 
DISTRIBUTION. 
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 Linneus distinguished by the name 
APIS MELLIFICA. 
The particular variety of this species known to Linneeus 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 HONEY-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 Linnzus ; 
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 
