Note A — Front matter

Although in the following pages the Apis mellifica alone is referred to, it may be well here to state that attention has recently been directed, not only in our own country, but in a still higher degree in Germany, France, and even in the United States of America, to the introduction of the Ligurian Bee, or Apis Ligustica of Italy, the race most probably that was known to Aristotle and Virgil, and, perhaps, to the ancient Greeks. The combs of this species of bee closely resemble those of the common kind, but its outward characteristics exhibit a marked difference; the first rings of the abdomen being of a reddish colour, instead of dark brown. A fertile Ligurian queen is readily accepted in an English stock-hive, from which a common queen has been abstracted, and in due time young Italians are distinguishable, gradually displacing the original inhabitants. Report speaks favorably of the superiority of the strangers over our own bee, as more hardy, more laborious, less irascible, and as swarming earlier.