>>The honey bee evidently evolved in the tropics, where there are a 
lot of different types of plants and a lot of predators. ... Some of 
the coping mechanisms they have are extreme aggressiveness, a high 
rate of swarming, and the tendency to abscond.

While this is very true of the African honey bees, the European honey 
bees have well adapted to what used to be the vast European 
woodlands.  The survival traits they display today, such as swarming 
periods, tendency not to abscond, lowered defensiveness, huge honey 
stores, are all tied to surviving in temperate woodland conditions.

Assuming bees evolved in Africa, how long did it take the descendants 
of Africanized bees to adopt to the European forests?  Who knows but 
the selection process at the fringe must have been ruthless.  The 
traits must have been available in the original bees or they became 
available through mutations during the adaptation period.  Who is to 
say the same selection process cannot bring out in European bees the 
traits for survival with the new parasites?  I would not rule it 
out.  

>>Maybe you can guess where this is headed: the healthier, more 
disease proof bees may already exist in Africa and Asia, in their 
original range. It may be that the European branch is an evolutionary 
dead end.

I am not a betting man but I would speculate that it would be easier 
to select for parasite tolerance in European bees that to select 
African or Asian bees for:

- good overwintering in our northern regions,
- large spring population build-ups for the huge honey stores we are 
used to,
- reduced absconding rate (EHB must be very desperate to abscond),
- lowered defensiveness.

As long as feral colonies survive in upstate NY forests and I get 
called every year for removal of very healthy colonies in suburbia, I 
would not write the European honey bee off.  The feral selection 
process may be the best thing we have going.  I am not sure our best 
breeding programs can select for all the key traits as well unless 
you get bands of beekeepers raising queens together locally in every 
region. 

Waldemar
Long Island, NY

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