32C 
THE niVE AND nONEY-BEE. 
parent-hive, when the first swarm and old queen left, were of the 
Italian stock exclusively, few of this kind remained in the Fall, 
and none survived the Winter. 4. The young queen is impreg- 
nated soon after she is established in a colony, and continues fer- 
tile during life. Were this not so, the genuine queens would not 
have continued to produce pure brood during those seven sueccs- 
sive years. 5. The queen leaves the hive to meet the drones. 
If not, it would scarcely have happened, that all the young queens 
bred in those seven years, with only one exception, were impreg- 
nated by common drones, and produced a bastard progeny. 6. The 
old queen regularly leaves with the first swarm, or the genuine 
Italian brood would not invariably have been the product of the 
swarm, but occasionally, at least, of the parent colony, which 
never happened in all that time. 
“ These observations and inferences impelled Dzierzon — who 
had previously ascertained that the colls of the Italian and com- 
mon bees were of the same size — to make an effort to procure the 
Italian bee ; and, by the aid of the Austrian Agricultural Society 
at Vienna,* he succeeded in obtaining, late in February, 1853, a 
colony from Mira, near Venice. On the following day, he trans- 
ferred the combs and bees into one of his own hives, and, when 
the season opened, placed the hive on a stand in his Apiary, and 
screwed it fast, that it might not be stolen. He never moved it 
during the ensuing Summer, but took from it combs with workei 
and drone-brood, at regular intervals, supplying their place with 
empty comb. In this way, he succeeded in rearing nearly fifty 
young queens, about one-half of which were impregnated by Italian 
drones, and produced genuine brood. The other half produced a 
bastard progeny. He continued thus to multiply queens by the 
removal of brood, till the parent-stock, and several of his artificial 
colonies, suddenly killed off their drones, on the 25th of June. 
The bees of the original colony still labored very assiduously, but 
♦ Some of tbe Governments of Europe have rocently taken great Interest In (lis- 
som tn at I ng among their pooplo a knowledge of Dzlerzon's systom of Boe-Culturo. 
Prussia furnishes annually a numbor of persons from diiforcnt parts of tho King- 
dom, with the moans of acquiring a practical knowledgo of this systom ; while the 
Bavarian Government han prescrlbod instruction in Dzlerzon’s theory and practice 
of bee-culturo, as a part of tho regular course of studies in its toachors’ Seminariesi 
