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. A manual of bee-keeping. Bees. NATURAL HISTORY OF THE HONEY BEE. 3 consider the most highly coloured as the typical form; and it is possibly more correct to give the precedence to Apis LigusHca, but it cannot be decided satisfactorily until we know in what country the Hive Bee really originated. Physiologically I can detect no difference between Ligurians and Black Bees. Individuals vary in size as well as in colour; but, on dissecting a number of each variety, the difference is nil, and no microscopist could separate a series of any given organs of both, if mixed indiscriminately. Some obse
. A manual of bee-keeping. Bees. NATURAL HISTORY OF THE HONEY BEE. 3 consider the most highly coloured as the typical form; and it is possibly more correct to give the precedence to Apis LigusHca, but it cannot be decided satisfactorily until we know in what country the Hive Bee really originated. Physiologically I can detect no difference between Ligurians and Black Bees. Individuals vary in size as well as in colour; but, on dissecting a number of each variety, the difference is nil, and no microscopist could separate a series of any given organs of both, if mixed indiscriminately. Some observers have asserted that the tongue of the Ligurian Bee is considerably longer than our British native Bee, by which means it is enabled to reach the nectar in the red clover, which its ally cannot do; but I have carefully measured with the micrometer a great many of both varieties, and I do not find more than the one hundredth of an inch difference in favour of the Ligurian, so small a difference being probably attribut- able to mere accident of breeding. The leading feature in the natural history of Bees, and one which distinguishes them from almost all other insects, is their singular distribution into three different kinds, constituting to all appearance so many different modifications of sex. A hive of Bees in June consists of a Queen, Workers, and Worker. Fig. I. Drone. Fig. 3- The first (in abnormal circumstances), and at certain B 2. Please note that these images are extracted from scanned page images that may have been digitally enhanced for readability - coloration and appearance of these illustrations may not perfectly resemble the original Hunter, John. London, W. H. Allen
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Keywords: ., bo, bookcentury1800, bookdecade1880, booksubjectbees, bookyear1884