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From:
Scot Mc Pherson <[log in to unmask]>
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Date:
Mon, 30 Jan 2006 00:05:16 -0600
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There has been some discussion about some of us small cell people
perhaps having africanized honey bees. I know that Dee has been
challenged to "prove" her bees aren't africanized. Well I have an idea
here which may seem strange, but perhaps no stranger than FABIS being
used as a rule, by the way the fabis standards include disclaimers for
local conditions and common breeds and the actual standard was developed
for only one specific place according to the standard saying in very
general terms (YOUR MILAGE MAY VARY).

So we have fabis which looks at wings, and we know that European races
(Italian, AMM and Carniolan) are one general grouping, and scutellata is
supposed to be the other grouping, what happens when other breeds become
involved or are subjected to the test? They remain "unclassified" in
fabis standards. How many bees are "unclassified" and can only be rooted
out by other methods including morphomety and genetic testing? We have
seen and demonstrated that small cell caucasians can by FABIS be
"unclassified" and often even confused with scutallata, often due to the
vast coloration differences range of caucasians. Caucasians can display
characteristics throughout the range of yellow to black depending solely
on their climate and latitude, so how can we deterimine yellow
caucasians from yellow AHB? 

I suspect there is a simple FABIS like field test which can be
accomplished that can be used to counter-test FABIS results. Caucasian
bees have documented longer mouth parts that any other Apis mellifera
breed. Therefore is should be just as easy to distinguish scutellata
X..from caucasians. This very experiment has been tested in Sao Paolo
and results are viewable online at:

http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S1415-47571998000400010&script=sci_a
rttext&tlng=en

Forgive the broken link, you'll have to paste it back together.


To give a short summary, it says that caucasian bees have
distinguishably longer mouth parts than scutallata, and graduated
crosses between these races demonstrated and correspondingly gradual
change in mouth part length.

This really could/should be a basis for FABIS(2) or addendum to current
FABIS standards which can distinguish scutellata from other races of
bees besides the 3 recognized european races. Consider that caucasian
bees come from the ural mountains which is infact on the more asian side
of the eurasian devide.

Also brings up some other interesting things to think about which I am
not willing to stick my neck out that far yet, but stuff I think that is
likely to be discussed sometime in the future. However if FABIS needs to
be updated, then why isn't it being updated? Or is it and I just didn't
know the good folks of the USDA were working on it? If they aren't, is
there a specific reason why its not if it effects beekeepers all over,
and if there isn't a reason why is fabis still being used if it is
ineffective?


--
Scot Mc Pherson
The Mc Pherson Family Honey Farms

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