76: SUCCESSFUL BEE-KEEPING. 
ITALIAN BEES. 
The Italian Bee, called also the Ligurian Bee, is found 
in a small Alps-pent district, embracing portions of 
northern Italy and southern Switzerland. They were 
once more largely distributed ; and are described by 
Aristotle, Virgil, and other ancient writers, as “small and 
round in size and shape, and variegated in color,” and 
the most valuable of any then known. Various accounts 
of bees answering the above description, as once known 
but perhaps lost, have reached our cay, but had come to 
be regarded, for the most part, by sober matter-of-fact 
moderns as among the fictions of ancient mythology. But 
it is now believed that these wonderful little creatures, 
thus thovght worthy of preservation in song by one of the 
world’s greatest poets, still exist and are identical with 
those now called Italian bees. As they were described 
two thousand years ago, so they are found now, the most 
valuable and industrious of their kind. Why they should 
have been lost sight of for so many years, does not ap- 
pear, unless it be in consequence of that universal, well 
known law of nature by which the inferior type predomi- 
nates over the superior, if neglected ; the golden-hued 
bee being thus gradually displaced by its black rival, ez- 
cept (so far as is known) in the district named, where 
the superior race appears to have held exclusive posses- 
sion, the surrounding mountains, covered with perpetual 
snow, being impassable by their wings. 
They were accidentally discovered by Capt. Balden- 
stein, while stationed in Northern Italy in the wars of Na- 
poleon ; who after returning to his castle in Switzerland, 
procured, in 1848, a colony near Lake Como, and trans- 
ported them over the Alps to his northern home. They 
