Now, I should like to see that swarm of bees that could take its wedding-flight from Stalla to Poschiavo over two mountains covered with snow (for the snow does not melt in June, and even in July and August the temperature is so low that every bee would perish) for the purpose of mating with the nearest borderers in Poschiavo. The same may be said of the entire chain of passes, on the Bernhardin, Gotthard, Splugen, Lukmanier, nowhere for thirty miles round is a bee to be found, for they cannot exists where, through the neighbourhood of the glaciers, the air is so cooled down. There is an end to the insect-world, and we may be sure that it has not entered into the mind of an Italian to import a hive from German-Switzerland, by which German blood may have been brought into Italy.] If the latter name were correct, they must have spread from Genoa, the former ligurian shore, into Upper Italy, and by gradual removal from their Genoese home, they could not gain in beauty of race, but must have degenerated in proportion the farther they went from their native country, &c. But this is not so. Their seat is the extreme north of Italy; that is, the Italian Switzerland, there they have preserved their purity. The proofs of an argument must not be fetched from the moon. A nationality is never found on the borders, but in the centre of a country. Only a short time ago it was asserted in the Bee Gazette of Eichstedt, that their cell construction is not larger than that of the black bee; but that is another erroneous assertion which only proves that the author of such a natural history either never handled a pure Italian bee; or, like a great many more ink-wasters, hatched something in the study which is nowhere to be found in nature. It does not require the use of spectacles to find a difference. The cubic contents of an Italian bee-cell is larger by thirty per cent, and the width is one-fifteenth more than that of the German cell. If, therefore, Italian bees are bred through several generations in German cells, the bees must ultimately degenerate and become smaller. Now as it has pleased some naturalists to name them Apis ligustica, I cannot conceive why we should not rebaptise them, as soon as we have arrived at the conviction that our researches have been more in accordance with nature. Therefore courage, and in future. Yellow Alp-bee, or, if necessary, that it should be latin, _Apis helvetia_, or helvetica (we are not good latin scholars). § 1. NATURE OF BEES. A healthy hive contains in summer three kinds of bees 1. The queen or mother-bee. 2. The drones or males. 3. The working-bees, or imperfect females. § 2. THE QUEEN. In a hive there is in general only one queen who lays during the time of her highest prolificness in summer daily from 1000 to 3000 eggs, and these in the best order; one egg in a cell. More than one queen the bees do not suffer. Should there be more, they fly away as swarms, or are killed by the bees.