> her description that the bees were extremely defensive to the point she thought they were africanized but the lab work informed us they were not.

Right, I posted about this earlier this year. She wrote: 

> Colonies that were very aggressive, V. destructor levels were not estimated because sampling was not possible as we got aggressively forced out of the area by the bees. ... We performed mitochondrial DNA analysis on 45 of the 48 study colonies sampled in 2015. Of the 45 colonies surveyed, workers from 38 colonies (84.4% of the total) exhibited the M4 haplotype, which belongs to the west European A. m. mellifera subspecies. 

> One surprising finding from this study was that none of the sampled colonies were Africanized by maternal descent. We found varroa mites in Dominica but did not find Africanized colonies. Perhaps beekeepers on the island have inadvertently selected for aggressive European bees that can withstand the pressures of varroa parasitism, although there is no proven link to date between honey bee aggressive behavior and resistance against varroa mites.

Juliana Rangel, Alejandra Gonzalez, Marla Stoner, Alyssa Hatter & Brenna E. Traver (2018): Genetic diversity and prevalence of Varroa destructor, Nosema apis, and N. ceranae in managed honey bee (Apis mellifera) colonies in the Caribbean island of Dominica, West Indies, Journal of Apicultural Research

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html