Hi Peter

 > I think the correct word is acclimated. Personally, I think this idea
 > is tossed about loosely without clear proof. Do we know how long it
 > would take for honeybees to become acclimated? I would think at least
 > several thousand years.

It only take seven years to reach about two thirds acclimatisation, 
using positive selection and adequate culling, if your program runs 
twenty or more years you can reach figures as good as 95%-98%.

However this takes work (interesting work, but never the less work).

It is no accident that in my breeding outfit the ratio of hive types was...

80 full sized hives (used for honey production, queen raising and drone 
raising).

110 five frame nucs (used as mating nucs during early and late season, 
but as small colony assessment units during the rest of the time and 
also overwintering of nucs).

300+ mating nucs (each having 6,7 or 8 rounds of queen mating).

It is those that are discarded from the queens raised that make the most 
difference and although I used to sell or give away maybe 20 % of the 
queens, the vast majority were deselected as being unsuitable.

It seems to me that there are few US beekeepers that go to those lengths.

 > Then you have to contend with the constant influx (at least in the
 > US) of bees from the South.

The problem is similar in UK, but most of the exotic stuff comes from 
continental Europe, but there are many many beekeepers importing queens 
illegally and a few that do it legally, but they are still imports from 
places where the grass may seem greener to some eyes. But even this 
problem can be overcome by use of morphometry and adequate selection.

 > There are plenty of beekeepers who never have to feed their bees,
 > except to stave off starvation due to a crop failure.

You are implying that this is in some way due to action of the 
beekeeper, only leaving honey of a quality that the bees concerned can 
survive on, but in UK, for instance, we have late crops of ivy honey 
that occur well after extracting has finished, if the bees can't cope 
with that ivy honey as winter stores, they will not be around in 
following seasons, so nature has a way of finding the fittest.

I too think that far too much stress is placed on winter feeding, when 
the population dynamics of the bees and their racial characteristics 
should be more explored to find or develop strains that do not require 
excessive winter stores.


Regards & Best 73s, Dave Cushman, G8MZY
http://website.lineone.net/~dave.cushman or http://www.dave-cushman.net
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