In the article referenced by Dr. Wenner, Mr. Mozer tries to paint an upbeat
picture:

"recent findings (pers. communication, W. L. Rubink) of ~25% European mtDNA
persisting in the Texas feral population are encouraging."

however, the facts he presents do not support much optimism:

By 1996, the feral populations had declined dramatically. Africanization
began to increase in 1995, with all the colonies Africanized by 1998
(unpublished data, William Rubink). These data suggest populations of
European feral honey bees were decimated by Varroa mites in 1995, and then
replaced by Africanized honey bees in the following years.

Colonies from Mexico and Honduras, had African mitochondrial DNA and high
frequencies of African nuclear DNA alleles. Consistent with previous
findings, east European alleles were absent or detected at low frequencies
in these colonies. West European alleles were found at frequencies from 26
to 31%.

These results suggest that queen offspring of the African queens first
introduced into Brazil mated with west European drones, incorporating
neutral markers* that have since remained in the expanding population of
feral African bees.

* Neutral markers. Does this mean that they have genes of west European bees
but that these genes don't give them any characteristics of those bees? If
so, it is of interest only to geneticists, since the overall behavior of the
hybrid would be African.

I Glass

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