> This is not an isolated incident - there have been many cases.
You bet, they have been importing Italian bees into the UK since the 1850s
THE ITALIAN OR LIGURIAN BEE.
A new, or rather a re-discovered, variety of bee has recently been brought into practical use amongst apiarians in Germany and America, as well as in this country [England]. It has been called "the Yellow Italian Alp Bee," and was also named ''the Ligurian Bee" by the Marquis de Spinola, who found it in Piedmont in 1865; and he considered it to be the principal species known to the Greeks. Leading apiarians are all but unanimous in pronouncing these bees justly entitled to the high character given ,them.
The special advantages claimed for them are- greater fecundity of the queens, more industry and productiveness, less irascibility, and a more handsome appearance; for, being of a golden colour, they are prettier than our black bees. The introduction of this new variety of bee into England was through our agency. M. Hermann, a bee-cultivator at Tamins-by-Chur, Canton Grison, Switzerland, wrote to us on the 5th of July, 1859, offering to supply us with Italian queen bees. The date should be specially noted, because this was the commencement of a new era in bee-keeping in this country.
THE ITALIAN OR LIGURIAN BEE.
A new, or rather a re-discovered, variety of bee has recently been brought into practical use amongst apiarians in Germany and America, as well as in this country [England]. It has been called "the Yellow Italian Alp Bee," and was also named ''the Ligurian Bee" by the Marquis de Spinola, who found it in Piedmont in 1865; and he considered it to be the principal species known to the Greeks. Leading apiarians are all but unanimous in pronouncing these bees justly entitled to the high character given them.
The special advantages claimed for them are- greater fecundity of the queens, more industry and productiveness, less irascibility, and a more handsome appearance; for, being of a golden colour, they are prettier than our black bees. The introduction of this new variety of bee into England was through our agency. M. Hermann, a bee-cultivator at Tamins-by-Chur, Canton Grison, Switzerland, wrote to us on the 5th of July, 1859, offering to supply us with Italian queen bees. The date should be specially noted, because this was the commencement of a new era in bee-keeping in this country.
"The Yellow Italian Alp bee is a mountain insect; it is found between two mountain chains to the right and left of Lombardy and the Rhetian Alps, and comprises the whole territory of Ticino, Val Tellina, and the southern Grisons. It thrives up to the height of 4,500 feet above the level of· the sea, and appears to prefer the northern clime to the warmer, for in the south of Italy it is not found. The Alps are their native country, therefore· they are called Yellow Alp or tame house bees, in contradistinction to the black European. bees, which we might call common forest bees, and which, on the slightest touch, fly like lightning into your face."
As all good and noble things in the world are more scarce than common ones, so there are more common black bees than of the noble yellow race, which latter inhabit only a very small piece of country, while the black ones are at home everywhere in Europe, and even in America." In a private letter received from Mr. Langstroth he informed us that in the season of 1865 he bred over 300 Italian queens; these he disseminated to various bee-masters on the American continent, and the united opinion of apiarians in that country was increasingly in favour of the decided advantage of the cultivation of the Italian bee.
Dr. Dzierzon is unmoved from his faith, for we find him in the present year giving as the result of twenty-five years' experience that this bee is "as gentle, diligent, and prolific as it is beautiful;" that it "bears our German climate well, and that its preservation in purity is with some care quite possible." Still some persons are sure to be disappointed with a foreign bee, just as some will be with a foreign country.
HEATH BEES.
This is a race of a very different character, deriving its name from the district known as Luneburg Heath, and found also about Oldenburg, Schleswig, and Holstein. In form and appearance Heath bees are wholly identical with our Own, but they seem like bees in a lower state of civilisation, perpetually swarming without occasion and with unmanageable impulse, and producing principally drones and drone comb even with a queen of the first year. ''Undoubtedly," says Von Berlepsch, ''this is by far the worst kind of bee existing in Germany."
Alfred Neighbour (1877) The Apiary; Or, Bees, Bee-hives, and Bee Culture
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