Our own experience with the Italian Alp bee enables us to corroborate the statements which have been made in favour of this new variety. We find the queens more prolific than those of the common kind, and the quantity of honey produced is greater. These two facts stand as cause and effect: the bees being multiplied more quickly, the store of honey is accumulated more rapidly, and the Italian bees consume, if anything, less food than the common, kind. When of pure Italian blood, these bees are, by some apiarians, thought to be hardier than our own. That they forage for stores with greater eagerness, and have little hesitation in paying visits to other hives, we can testify from our own observation. The following anecdote will illustrate their intrusive propensities:--Another bee-keeper living in the neighbourhood of our apiary, when inspecting our hives, observed the yellow bees: he exclaimed, "Now, I have found out where those strange-looking bees come from; for," said he, "these yellow-jackets are incessant visitors to my hives. I thought they were a species of wasp that had come to rob, and until now I have been unable to account for their appearance at the entrance of my hive, so that I have killed them by hundreds." This was not at all pleasing intelligence for us, and we trust that our neighbour has been more lenient to "the yellow-jackets" since his visit, for such summary capital punishment was wholly unmerited, because, when a bee is peaceably received (see page 127), it becomes naturalized, and works side by side with the others in its fresh abode. We are inclined to believe that more visiting takes place amongst bees of different hives than bee-keepers have been accustomed to suppose: where the Italian and black bees are kept near each other, the foreigners being conspicuous by their lighter colour, there is less difficulty in identifying them when at the entrance of other hives. In the season of 1864, we had more honey from a Ligurian stock than from any one of our colonies of black bees. From this Ligurian hive we have taken a glass super containing 40 lbs. nett of honey, besides having drawn from it an artificial swarm; and, after all, it remains the strongest hive in our apiary.