a Krengel snip followed by > my comment... 
It sounds as if you are suggesting the honeybee is a not native to North America. I understand this is not true.  I believe the colonists of 1622 were just a bit ahead of their time.  They were simply, though perhaps naively, reintroducing a species that had gone extinct.  We now do it regularly.  
>As I understand it, the honeybee was present in North America beginning about 100 million years ago and became extinct about 14 million years ago due to the advances of glaciers.  This is from memory so I don’t have cites to justify it.  I wonder if others might confirm or refute my claim.

I, for one, am glad these forward thinking adventurers reintroduced the honeybees.  They continue to give me pleasure.

>Some people just count cost and others with a more balanced approach do consider the long list of benefits with the cost...  I think I do recall a bee being found in the americas that was captured in amber although I never hear a story as to how or when it went extinct. IMHO.. some branches of science create fascinating STORIES with very little evidence to PROVE or disprove the story. Such as 90% of all species that have ever lived have gone extinct! Now how could anyone prove or disprove that?

>The Chinese tallow that exist around the gulf coast of Texas (especially east and west of Houston Texas) has gained some recent headlines as a introduced species that needs to be controlled.  It produces (in most years) a bumper crop of thin (ie watery) low quality honey and therefore lots of honey producers here and from elsewhere are up in arms when anyone even talks about controlling this introduced species...  I suspect rising water levels and urban development will do the job without any program to irradiate Chinese Tallow.


>Guns, Germs and Steel is a pretty good book (for novice like myself) on how agricultural species have been moved around  throughout human history.


Gene in Central Texas...  

 

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