BEE-L Archives

Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology

BEE-L@COMMUNITY.LSOFT.COM

Options: Use Monospaced Font
Show Text Part by Default
Show All Mail Headers

Message: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]
Topic: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]
Author: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]

Print Reply
Subject:
From:
Reply To:
Discussion of Bee Biology <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Mon, 1 Sep 1997 11:55:06 GMT+0200
Content-Type:
text/plain
Parts/Attachments:
text/plain (80 lines)
Hi All
 
I find it quite amuusing reading all the replies about the whole NZ
bee/Hawaii bee debate. It sounds almost remarkably of bee racism.
 
In south africa we have two types of bee. The transvaal honeybee
(AHB) and the CApe Honey bee (A.m.capensis). Transvaal beekeepers
will lament the uselessness of the cape bee. Likewise, cape
beekeepers get badly stuung whenever they toch tvl bees.
 
Nevertheless people moved the two bees around, and wiped out much of
the transvaal honey industry. The cape bees are adopted as queens by
the tvl bees and eventually waste the hive. Lesson: if you are
dealing with an indigenos situation, don't introduce an exotic into
an area where you have an indigenous animal capable of doing
everything you need. Next lesson: Apis melifera ligustica and iberica
introduced into asia, successfully wiped out lots of Apis cerana, and
gave us the worldwide varroa problem, because people took an
introdced species, which now had an exotic disease and popped it into
Germany and I think Ney York State. Bam. Good move.
 
As with any biological system, there are a delicate set of balances.
We humans alter the balance. We can deal with the results in two
ways:
 
We can legislate against things coming and exploiting our
imbalances-eg introducing american strains of EFB that may not be
easily dealt with by NZ bees.
 
Or, we can say, throw in everything and see what the balance is. We
could even help by genetically engineering the bees a bit.
 
So we have NZ that is going the protectionist route, maintaining the
stats quo, and the US which uused to import tons of bees from
everywhere, thus ensuring maximum genetic variability in the resident
exotic bees. This strikes me as being the best idea for a big
variable country.
 
Likewise, I think that NZ being a small isolated, conservative island
is right in it's stand as well. Hawaii on the other hand has the
wrong bees anyhow. There is a reason that A.m.iberica is more like an
african bee than a.m.carnica. It is slowly being africanised by gene
flow. There is also a reason why every bee introdction in africa has
laft almmost no genetic bee contamination. Sometimes, a superior
organism evolves. With time, that will conquer all. The range of
A.m.scutellata at present extends from somewhere in the middle of
south africa almost all the way to sdan (if I remember right.) Not
other bee has such a large natural range. It also extends exotically
from somehwere in argentina to california, with a few colonies having
been reported as far as Tennessee! (how many knew that? Moved there
by a migratory beekeeper)
 
So people can sit back and tinker trying to create an everything
resistant eropean bee that will eventually be wiped out when some
wise quite beekeeper making lots of money of tame AHB, through better
pollination services, works out how to get Scutellata to regulate
brood laying with temperature and is resistant naturally to most of
these things. This in turn could easily be wiped out by someone
experimenting with A.m.capensis which could wipe out all bee in the
US?
 
Just a few thoughts.
 
Keep well
 
Garth
 
Just a thought.
---
Garth Cambray       Kamdini Apiaries
15 Park Road        Apis melifera capensis
Grahamstown         800ml annual precipitation
6139
Eastern Cape
South Africa               Phone 27-0461-311663
 
3rd year Biochemistry/Microbiology    Rhodes University
In general, generalisations are bad.
Interests: Flii's and Bees.

ATOM RSS1 RSS2