Peter Borst wrote

> wonder if anyone has ever produced a better bee.

The question is better than what?  We often hear the story of how the bees in the old days are better than todays.  Why would this be the case?  They were not subject to all the maladies that bees face nowadays so I often wonder how they would have fare with these maladies.

The floral sources, especially here in Australia, are no where near what they were in the "good old days".  What with all the herbicides that are used the weeds are no longer there.  In Australia we now have winter tolerant varities of lucerne (alfalfa in the USA and Canada) that produce nowhere near as much honey as the old varieties.

In those days, beekeepers put only 40 hives on a site. Now it is up to 100 and often as high as 150.

So have we bred a better bee?  I suppose we will never know because of all the variables and not being able to directly compare the bees from the "good old days" to todays bees.

Trevor Weatherhead
AUSTRALIA