Since the Italian bee was brought to England, some half-century ago, there is no doubt that the original English strain has been greatly modified. Some authorities, indeed, question whether there are any absolutely pure British bees left at all. The golden girdles of the Italian crop up in the most unlikely places, and the foreign blood seems to have got into the race in all but the remotest parts of the country. One must regret, although it is a vain regret now, that these undesirable aliens were ever allowed to set foot on the soil. Whatever naturally survives and thrives in a particular country, must be the most suitable thing for that country; and these southern races of the honey-bee seem to have brought back, to the detriment of our own stock, idiosyncrasies long ago bred out of the native race. Much of the nervous irritability and proneness to disease visible in the honey-bee of to-day is more or less directly traceable to the introduction of foreign blood; and the grand special advantage of the Italian bee—its much vaunted and widely advertised possession of a long tongue—has proved an entire myth. Numberless measurements undertaken by our leading scientific apiarians have proved that the Italian bee has a tongue no longer than any other, although most are willing to concede her the possession of a very long and ready sting indeed. But here we do her an injustice: a pure-bred Italian worker-bee is as good or as bad tempered as any other of her species. It is the first crosses with the native bee which display so much vindictive aggressiveness, and have given to the whole race its general bad name. In the time of the great honey-flow—which in southern England begins in May, early or late, according to the season, and may endure for six weeks—it is a common thing in the country to see people turn back from the footpaths, running through the white-clover or sainfoin fields, because of the huge and terrifying uproar made by the foraging bees. When there is a large acreage under these crops, and the day is a fair one, this note reaches a volume hardly to be credited as a sound of work and peace. It is much more like the din of a great bee-war, and it is small wonder that the stranger, unlearned in the ways of the hives, should fear to go through what is very like a scene of battle and carnage. And yet there is no time of year when the honey-bee is so little inclined to molest her human fellow-creatures as this. So long as the honey-weather holds—the warm nights when the nectar is secreted, and the rainless days when it can be gathered—she can hardly be induced to attack, even if her home is being turned inside out, and the sudden sunlight riddling its darkness through and through.