> The US is a very very big place, with massive amounts of empty space out
west. As most of this area is federal land, and the federal government
only rarely issues permits to beekeepers, there is a good chance that these
areas have had zero managed colonies for quite some time.
One such area that has been surveyed for bees is the Grand Staircase -
Escalante National Monument in southern Utah. Currently 1.87 million acres,
nearly all unoccupied by humans.
Between 2000 and 2003 Olivia Messinger (now Carril), et al, completed "a
4-year study of bees in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument
(GSENM), found in southern Utah, USA. Using opportunistic collecting and a
series of standardized plots, we collected bees throughout the six-month
flowering season for four consecutive years. In total, 660 bee species are
now known from the area, across 55 genera, and including 49 new species."
[80,000 specimens!]
Carril OM, Griswold T, Haefner J, Wilson JS. 2018. Wild bees of Grand
Staircase-Escalante National Monument: richness, abundance, and
spatio-temporal beta-diversity. *PeerJ* 6:e5867
https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.5867
Three percent of the specimens were honey bees, from about 100 sites, some
located up to 40-50 miles from any current human habitation. "Collections
were biased against honey bees—given a choice between collecting a feral
honey bee, *Apis mellifera* Linnaeus and another bee, the other bee was
collected," so that number is probably less than the total honey bee
locations.
Honey bees were first brought through the area in 1878 as part of the
Mormon Hole in the Rock Expedition to colonize SE Utah. A journal entry by
a member mentions a wagon accident which spilled a colony of honey bees
that had to be "sacked" up before they could move on, almost certainly the
first introduction of European honey bees into SE Utah. Any significant bee
keeping since then in that vast unsettled area is not well recorded, but
unlikely. It seems the feral honey bees have done a more thorough job of
colonizing the area than the Mormons!
No testing for Varroa mites (or viruses, or micro-biome, etc) on those
honey bees was done in 2000-2003 or since.
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