>  In general, European honey bees are hard wired to prefer Old World pollens over a number of New World pollens

Just wondering where this came from. Honey bees certainly do perfectly well in the New World, as well as Australia and New Zealand, despite having to depend on plants that weren't present in the regions where they are thought to have originated. Honey bees are generalists, as are most of the plants they utilize. Generalists do not exhibit tight dependencies between species. Pollinator webs that are built from a multitude of generalists are far more resilient as well, since the loss of one partner in a dependency often leads to the loss of the other partner.

PLB

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