Garth,
 
I appreciate your response.  There is a good point there in connection
with importation of additional strains from outside the USA.
 
Within the population of AHB in the Americas, however, there is adequate
diversity of behavior with which to work.  There is no need to import
anything.  It is my impression from the responses I get from within the
USA that there is either no interest in such an approach (possibly due
to funding problems) or no one has quite gotten around to it.
 
The whole thing is mainly of academic interest to me, since even the
temperate climate adapted EHB does not easily survive here in Alaska.
It simply seems to me that many of the reasons that AHB has an advantage
are now understood - earlier mating flights of AHB drones, etc. - and to
breed for low agressive behaviour in AHB and to breed for earlier mating
flights in EHB (would give us a good edge.
 
Communities like Santa Barbara, California have, I understand,
completely banned the keeping of honeybees.  It seems to me that what
they will accomplish is to limit their honeybee population, in the long
run, to AHB.  This is the reverse of what they are intending.
 
Thanks for your input,
 
Tom
 
--
"Test everything.  Hold on to the good."  (1 Thessalonians 5:21)
 
Tom Elliott
Chugiak,  Alaska
U.S.A.
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