In the spring of 1856, Mr. S. B. Parsons, of Flushing, L. I., invited me to visit him, and advise with him as to the best way of managing his Italian bees. On my way, I called upon Mr. Mahan, who was joint owner with me of a large interest in my patent hive. He gave me a very graphic account of his visit to the apiary of the Baron Von Berlepsch, from whom he obtained a queen, and supplied me with a few Italian workers for Prof. Joseph Lidy, that he might determine how the length of proboscis, in that variety, compared with that of the black bee. On arriving at Flushing, Mr. Parsons showed me five hollow logs, or “gums,” placed in an old bee-shed. It was a warm, sun-shiny day, and I saw only an occasional bee flying out from one of the hives. These colonies had been purchased in Italy, carried safely on the backs of mules over the Alpine passes, to Genoa, from which port they were safely shipped to New York; but by a succession of mishaps, four of them died at Flushing. The fifth contained a mere handful of bees, with their queen, which I introduced to a colony of black bees. It is hardly necessary to say that none of these hives were ever in the same vessel with Mr. Mahan.
On the 18th of April, the steamer Argo arrived in New York, after a tedious and stormy voyage. Mr. Herman, a German bee-keeper, and author of a work on the Italian bee, who had been furnished with a large sum of money by Mr. Parsons to buy Italian bees in the best districts of Italy, and who had agreed to bring them over in the original hives, and breed queens for Mr. Parsons, _was not on board_, but in his place, a young Austrian, by the name of Bodmer. On the 19th, as soon as the bees were allowed to be landed, they were carried to Flushing. The small boxes in which they were put up were in three different packages, one of which was consigned to the U. S. Government, one to Mr. Mahan, and one to Mr. Parsons. As the Austrian said that he knew, by examination on shipboard, that the bees were in a very bad condition, and many of them already dead, and, as the day was very pleasant, they were all examined under my personal supervision, and I can assure Mr. Robinson that every colony consigned to the Government and Mr. Mahan, was dead. A few, only, of those marked for Mr. Parsons, had living queens, some of which soon died, and in a short time he found himself the possessor of only two queens, one of which was the queen found alive upon my arrival at Flushing.