Del Governo delle Api. Trattato inedito dell'Abbate Luigi Fontana

Milano: Dalla Società Tipog. De'Classici Italiani, 1847. 8vo. 190 x 130 mm. (7 ½ X 5 inches). 107, 1 pp., one folding plate with four figures. Early 20th century decorated paper over boards, leather label of Rappaport of Rome. Rare manual of bee keeping by a provincial cleric, educated at a seminary outside Como. According to a short biography, Fontana was fluent in Latin and a student of the writings of Virgil and Cicero. He studied husbandry and focused much of his attention on bees and their importance for agricultural productivity. He was dedicated to the working with poor and helping farmers to increase their crops and their standard of living. The work includes an opening chapter on the nature and characteristics of bees and is followed by chapters on bee hives and the work of the drones and the queen. He provides methods for safely collecting and transporting bees as well as information on how to read the signs of whether the hive is thriving or in trouble. In the later chapters he focuses on the foods necessary for a healthy hive and about moths, a natural enemy of bees and the hive. The folding lithographic plate illustrates a thriving series of hives in a barnyard setting and configuration of the face of the hive which allows bees to come and go, and the slide plates where the bees build their cones. NUC cites a copy at the National Library of Agriculture only and only electronic copies are cited in OCLC; only five copies are listed in ICCU. Other than the biography that appears in the front of this volume, no citation was found in DBI or Laterza.