>The unfortunate state of affairs whereby specimens of African honeybees were named according to their colour,
I'd venture to say that the practice continues today and is not limited to African honeybees. Somehow bee color passed from science into a belief system that is mostly impervious to logic. Of course, I'm not addressing folks in this list, but the sale of domestic bee stock to uninformed novice and backyard beekeepers is generally color-based - dark = Carniolan, yellow = Italian.
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