This is an old question.  I got hung up trying to answer it when asked by a 
student friend.  I got started, but ...Help!

> One thing I was hoping to get some insight on right now is surrounding the 
> idea of domestication. Since humans have had an interest in bees for such 
> a long time, can these bees be considered domesticated? I'm thinking about 
> this in terms of artificial homes, bee husbandry, selection and genetics, 
> which would suggest that they absolutely are. What are your thoughts?

Domesticated?  That is a real question.  I think most beekeepers consider 
bees to be semi-domesticated, but our hives and management are largely 
designed to accommodate the bees needs, and to keep them around.  After all, 
they are not fenced, not chained, not hobbled (although some beekeepers clip 
a bit off the queen's wing to prevent flight), and could abscond or swarm 
any time, or fail to thrive.

As for breeding, there are strains that have been selected or bred and 
maintained for specific purposes, however many or most of them are not very 
stable and would revert quickly to a mongrel type in the absence of human 
management.  As well,special hybrid queens are raised and sold.  These 
queens are excellent, as are the colonies they produce, but their daughter 
queens and their progeny may be undesirable.  The concept used to be quite 
popular, but seems to have passed out of fashion.

All that having been said, honey bees do escape regularly and become 
established in nature quite comfortably in many areas, and are considered 
feral when they do so, somewhat like wild horses.  Previous to the recent 
arrival of the killer mites, feral bees were well established in many areas 
of the US and parts of Canada.  Some say that the ferals escaped destruction 
by the mites in some areas, others say that the ferals these days are all 
recently escaped 'domestic' (managed) bees.

Of course North America is a small part of the world, and honey bees of one 
sort or another are found almost everywhere there is agriculture worldwide. 
The degree and type of management varies from very sophisticated to simple 
robbing of wild nests.

So, this is not a simple question.
 

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