PLB >Apparently, selection for avoidance of potential sources of diseases and parasites did not occur, suggesting that parasites and diseases have not been important selective agents in the natural history of honey bees.

> But isn’t it a little early, in terms of evolution, to judge the selective agents that may be working? Change comes in exceedingly small increments and evolution has all the time it needs.

Hi 
Sorry that wasn't clear. When excerpting copyrighted material, sometimes I err toward brevity. The author was referring to the evolution of the honey bee over millions of years and the fact that disease avoidance appears to be absent. Also, honey bees seem to be pretty clueless about other hazards, flying into vats of honey or consuming poisonous nectars. 

On the other hand, they have alternative mechanisms for preventing and controlling disease, such as extreme fastidiousness in the nest, collective antiseptic materials (propolis), and quite probably sick bees voluntarily remove themselves from the hive. None of these things is foolproof, of course.

And I fully agree that evolution, at least in the honey bee, is likely to move on a very slow scale, particularly given that they continually out-cross. However, some real-time evolution has been observed in African populations, where varroa killed off susceptible strains and varroa resistant bees came to dominate. There are very proven few examples of this in the European bees.

PLB

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