[log in to unmask]  wrote:

> I love bees and I wouldn't sit back and let them
>die off, any more than I would keep my kids from going to see a doctor.

>in the case of bees, they have survived over 100 million years by
letting the susceptible die off, and the survivors breed.

Yes, well, I over-simplified for the sake of readers who prefer short
but sweet. Bees as a species are not in danger of demise. Of course!
it isn't worth the bother to prop up susceptible individuals and it's
harmful to the group in the long run. Replacing hives lost with
hardier stock is the best approach; we agree on this. But keeping the
bees you already have alive is also a priority. How can you be a
beekeeper without bees? Hmm.

* * *

> It is thought that bees originally evolved from hunting wasps which acquired a taste for nectar and decided to become vegetarians. Fossil evidence is sparse but bees probably appeared on the planet about the same time as flowering plants in the Cretaceous period, 146 to 74 million years ago.

> Fossils of the true Apis type were first discovered in the Lower Miocene (22 to 25 million years ago) of Western Germany. A bee resembling Apis dorsata but much smaller (about the size of a present day mellifera) was present in the Upper Miocene (about 12 million years ago).

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