>Long denied, Bill Wilson confirmed to me what's only been more recently acknowledged - AHB sperm was imported from Brazil into the USA, used to produce breeder queens, and introduced into the US bee populations via hybrid queens which were first distributed to breeders in the south, then shipped to states like MT, Dakotas, and Wyoming in the 1970s.  The next spring, many of our northern state beekeepers found empty colonies.  This coincides with the first reports of Disappearing Disease on a large scale, eventually encompassing almost as many states as the 2006 reports.  
>

Huh... very curious...

Back in the mid 1980's I bought some excessively mean bees from a bee keeper along the Mississippi River.  Not only were the bees excessively mean they were almost impossible to manage in the way folks managed bees in those days.  Quite literally they were impossible to keep in a box or to introduce a newly mated queen.  At the time I was working seasonally for a second generation beekeeper and when I told him of my experience he pretty much related the same story as described above.  I seem to recall my employer tagged this event as 'absconding disease' and after reading some very old ABJ it was reported to have been quite commonly experienced in both Texas and Louisiana at that time.

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