In a message dated 09/09/05 22:49:54 GMT Daylight Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:

<<Really, it was probably right and the current dark bee is an  hybrid
whose gene(s) of resistance to the acarine desease is that  (are
those) of the Mediterranean bee. The Nature strategy makes  it
possible "resistant"  to survive and it kills all the  "sensitive
ones". In this case, the current dark bee is no more the  native
North-European bee.>>


There's undoubtedly a degree of hybridisation  there, but we still have bees
which are morphologically identical to specimens  collected before 1850 (I
believe the first recorded importation of Italians was  in 1859), and extremely
similar to remains found in archaeological dig in York  (dating to about 1000
AD) and Oslo (about 1200 AD) (Ruttner, Milner & Dews,  The Dark European
Honeybee, BIBBA, 1990). I think it's reasonable to conclude  that some strains of
the native bee survived. Additionally, Beowulf Cooper  reports that many
beekeepers with native strains did not lose their bees to Isle  of Wight Disease.
What seems to have happened is that the disease was most  serious in the
South-East, where the local stocks were very hybridised, as it's  probably the most
suitable part of the UK for Italians. Work done  there was then extrapolated,
wrongly, to the rest of the country, with the  result that nobody actually
looked at what had happened in those parts of the  country where native stocks were
strongest until many years later.


Regards,

Robert Brenchley

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