Dee Lusby wrote:

>Probably! For which area of the country are they then
>getting into sync with for acclimitizing to local flora for
>better health/broodturns? Do you want them in tune with
>local flora your area for working locally (including local
>region), or southern in a different region with different
>timings basically, not counting other things that could be
>not natural.

But, we are talking about *migratory beekeeping*. The idea of acclimation
really doesn't apply here (if anywhere). One of the characteristics of honey
bees (and people) is their ability to adapt to almost any climate. 

Some species even migrate -- hundreds of miles -- in order to take advantage
of seasonal changes. Of course, the African bee has colonized almost every
country in the Americas, without need of the help of migratory beekeepers. 

Migratory beekeeping has been carried on for thousands of years and the
miracle is that bees put up with it. Henry Thoreau wrote in 1842:

> The keeping of bees, for instance, is a very slight interference. It is
like directing the sunbeams. All nations, from the remotest antiquity, have
thus fingered nature. 

> "Columella tells us," says he, "that the inhabitants of Arabia sent their
hives into Attica to benefit by the later-blowing flowers." Annually are the
hives, in immense pyramids, carried up the Nile in boats, and suffered to
float slowly down the stream by night, resting by day, as the flowers put
forth along the banks; and they determine the richness of any locality, and
so the profitableness of delay, by the sinking of the boat in the water. 

> True, there is treachery and selfishness behind all this; but these things
suggest to the poetic mind what might be done.

pb

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