. American bee journal. Bee culture; Bees. 494 and given first to the black bees which worked till the liquid was inaccessible, when it was placed before Italians. These would invari- aly commence to sip the honey. Again, a box one-half inch deep, without top or bottom, was covered with fine gauze having fifteen meshes to the inch. A glass was then placed in the box so inclined that while one end rested against the gauze the other was one- half inch from it. The glass was thinly spread with honey on the side next the gauze. This was placed in a hive of Italians when the glass was cleaned of ho
. American bee journal. Bee culture; Bees. 494 and given first to the black bees which worked till the liquid was inaccessible, when it was placed before Italians. These would invari- aly commence to sip the honey. Again, a box one-half inch deep, without top or bottom, was covered with fine gauze having fifteen meshes to the inch. A glass was then placed in the box so inclined that while one end rested against the gauze the other was one- half inch from it. The glass was thinly spread with honey on the side next the gauze. This was placed in a hive of Italians when the glass was cleaned of honey for a distance of twenty-four meshes from the edge where the glass rested on the gauze. The black bees coidd only reach, and only cleaned, for nine- teen meshes. Many trials gave the same re- sult. This then shows why Italians can gather, and often do collect from flowers which fail utterly to attract the black bees. The nectar is beyond their reach. CONCLUSIONS. It would seem from the above that Ameri- can-bred Italian bees have shorter tongues than those direct from Italy. It seems very probable that "Natural Selection," the very law which raised the Italians to their position of superiority, also gave to them their longer tongues. Shut up in their mountain home, a mere isolated basin, where competition must have been very excessive, nature took advan- tage of every favorable variation, and devel- oped those striking excellences peculiar to the Italian. During these ages there was no kindly bee-master possessed of the intelligence sufficient to nurse the weaklings, nor any " Dollar Queen business " to stimulate indis- criminate breeding, and the weak died vic- tims to starvation. And so we are indebted to the stern, inexorable law of nature for the incomparable breeding which wrought out such admirable results in far-famed Liguria. Unquestionably the crowded apiaries of Aus- tria and Germany have heightened the "strug- gle for life," and this
Size: 4276px × 584px
Photo credit: © Library Book Collection / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bo, bookcentury1800, bookdecade1860, booksubjectbees, bookyear1861
