In article <[log in to unmask]>, Dee
Lusby <[log in to unmask]> writes
>Hi all
>
>Murray McGregor got me looking at books following his email
>of looking at bees for two days to see if wings longer then
>body. Glad he found some, but he didn't say if any were
>uniformly mated that way or not. Kinda hope he found one.

Sorry, cannot say if this was the case or not, but it does seem to be
almost the normal. I am NOT talking anything extreme here, as I was
using your own description of 'to at least the last tergite of the
abdomen'. Some are longer than that and some actually have shaped wings
which curve with the shape of the abdomen and reach right to the end of
it. Never really looked at this characteristic before, but still finding
that the big black bees have the greatest prosperity and apparent
health.

MANY drones have wings longer than their bodies.

>It too opens with a picture opposite the title page of
>queen, drone, and worker bee and is of British Black Bees,
>after Curtis, from Bagster's "The Management of Bees,"
>1834, with bees shown both magnified and natural size.
>
>I consider it a good picture series of small black bees in
>general whether for UK or mainland EU or mediterranean area
>or even here in our area of USA.

I would doubt the reliability of a picture of that age, and if it is a
photo it must be a later addition.

However, if I am seeing this characteristic as almost normal, and our
bees are PREDOMINANTLY A.m.m, this could be an interesting clue to what
you have, A.m. iberica, the Spanish/Portuguese bee, is a sub group off
the mellifera/mellifica race. It is also the bee most likely to have
been imported in antiquity and exist as relict ferals, albeit now
greatly modified by other genetic influxes and selection for local
conditions.

Without looking at climatic data I would suspect that the  situation on
the Spanish Meseta might be quite similar to Nevada/Arizona/New Mexico.
Fairly high altitude, arid, windy, very hot in summer, prone to cold
blasts in winter.
--
Murray McGregor