welcome! garth is/was a rhodes univ. student who ir/regularly appears on the list...would appreciate more info on capensis/ south african beekeeping, is your/any newsletter(s) available electronically? just for the record and to bee redundant, this reply is to m.hale's response to a previous posting on the list: am not suggesting any importation of cape bees to the americas, merely implying that they may already have arrived by unknown accidental/incidental means (much as small hive beetle did from the same part of the world) and/or thelytoky could have been naturally selected for since the earliest apis introductions... indeed it's not only information technology that has made the "global village" real, just reading the past month's postings on the bee-net is illustrative of the "new world disorder", but since live with it we must (don't believe in eradication), we should be open to the possibilities still available to us via biodiversity...the demonstrable presence of thelytoky in non-cape honey bees and the potential it may have in mitigating some of the problems in apiculture worldwide should not go unexplored...