> ...now, before we all go calling these bees "africanized", lets look at 
> the timeframe....this was written 2 years before ahb were found in arizona 
> (where there was a bee lab looking for such)...and these bees were being 
> worked with by erickson and others at the tucson bee lab.  if these "lus 
> bees" were really "ahb", it would say a lot about the observational 
> abilities of these researchers.

Of course that was then and this is now.  Whether or not Lusbys' bees were 
AHB at that time, Dee had some samples taken so the answer is out there 
somewhere, and AFAIK the results were never released.  Lusbys had a falling 
out with the lab, and things changed.  The situation got very political and 
a lot of people who know are not talking -- publically, at least.

> seems to me that thelytoky is a useful survival mechanism, and not a 
> genetic dead end.

I personally agree that it can be useful, and we went through that here a 
few times a decade or so ago.  We also speculated that colonies that raise 
and tolerate multiple queens well without special manipulations might also 
be a bonus.

> beekeepers who never let things get to this point (colonies with laying 
> workers in a queenless situation left to their own devices to the end) 
> will be diluting any genetics that produce thelytoky...these traits will 
> never be selected for in such situations.

Not selecting for a characteristic that is fixed in a population should 
neither increase nor decrease its frequency.  Instances it proves more 
useful than useless or harmful -- results in survival in a hopeless 
situation -- should increase its frequency in future populations.

allen
---
Grown-ups never understand anything for themselves, and it is tiresome for 
children to be always and forever explaining things to them. -- Antoine de 
Saint-Exupery (1900 - 1944), "The Little Prince", 1943 

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