I saw a hardcopy of some of the messages about the competion among honey
bees and native bees. This is a subject that interest me very much and
on which I have done some work.  No doubt the most difficult part of a
study on this subject is the evaluation of food availability, especially
when one is interested in the hole assemblage of plants and bees of a
community. I have studied two different communities in Brazil (some
articles have just been submitted, others are in preparation) using
the size of flowers as an indication of the amount of food they produce.
My impression is that competion does occur between the africanized honey
bee and the native bees. This stress imposed by Apis is not equaly dis-
tributed among all other species but might be very heavy on some of them
Apis represented 24% of the bee biomass in one place (under native vege-
tation) and 44% in the other (an abandoned pasture with many introduced
weeds). This suggests me that Apis might be more efficient in disturbed
environments than in undisturbed ones. This might be due to better
adaptation of the native species to the native flora. Some one has also
talked about differences between the european and the africanized bees.
I have tryed to maintain colonies of italian honey bees in southeastern
Brazil, but they would not build populations up even when the africaniz-
ed bees were storing plenty of honey. It has been said in the literature
that feral colonies of honey bees were not common in South and Central
America before the arrival of the africanized bees. This probably say
something about the differences, I guess...
                                                 Fernando