Dee said:
Amazing that where the biggest concentrations of small cell
beekeepers have changed over their whole outfits this seems
to crop up. Bolling Bee must be doing good then. Yet
Question: Since all yellow and black bees as small are
still lumped together in the USA for ID for AHB, instead of
ID by race/strain, then what are they really seeing?

I agree most AHB id in the U.S. is primitive as most  ID  still follows wing
venation ID set up by Ruttner over 25 years ago.

Some DNA testing goes on I am told but most ID is done by wing venation.

Size (small cell bees)  has nothing to do with AHb ID by wing venation but
*race* (as Dee points out can as Ruttner wrote was unable to delimit Apis
mellifera adansonii (Latreille 1804) from Apis mellifera capensis (Escholtz
1822 ) on the basis on wing characters ( The Hive and Honey Bee 92 edition
pg. 36).

In other words bees from one of the African races which are not aggressive
might test AHB and not be aggressive at all. Might not the monticola bee
test AHB?

In my own looking into the matter with a friend and a microscope we see bees
with a certain amount of wing hooks seem to be aggressive regardless of
race. Have others doing research on aggressive bees  noticed the same thing
or simply a coincidence?

Sincerely,
Bob Harrison

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