> Further, much of beekeeping over the centuries was not selective at all,
> people just collected colonies and robbed from them regardless of the
> nature of the bees.

> Tel Rehov comes to mind

The authors wrote:
> A possible explanation for our findings is that the geographical distribution of the honeybee subspecies 3,000 years ago was different from today and that bees other than A. m. syriaca were prevalent in the north of Israel.

> Another possibility is that the inhabitants of Tel Rehov deliberately imported bees most suitable for their industry. Indeed, the Syrian bee might be a poor choice for large-scale beekeeping within an urban setting such as Tel Rehov because of its aggressiveness, high tendency to swarm, and low honey yield.

> Anatolian bees are amenable to large-scale beekeeping and are superior to the Syrian bees in terms of their calm temper, propolis production, low robbing tendency, and three- to eight-times higher honey yields.

First of all, this whole scenario was based on a handful of burnt bees found in an urn. Second, it doesn't contradict what I said which was that "much of beekeeping was not selective." That doesn't mean that some people weren't peddling "better bees" in Turkey and these guys bought some.

Additionally, 

> Mazar’s excavations at Tel Rehov in northern Israel have revealed the only apiaries known so far from excavations in the ancient Near East (Gupta, 2014).

It's possible A. m. syriaca wasn't even kept in hives at all. Some bees, like Apis dorsata, won't tolerate beekeepers' meddling. Anyway, this was not sophisticated beekeeping, it was still pretty rudimentary, catch as catch can. These people didn't even know the queen was female.

PLB

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