Allen Dick wrote:

> As for the South American importation, I am always astounded that it was
> not foreseen by Dr. Kerr, a wise and experienced beekeeper, that -- even if
> queens were never accidentally released -- that drones would be at large
> and that they carried the same genes.  I can only assume that the concern
> about the escape of the queens was initially over loss of the precious
> queens, rather than the eventual impact on beekeeping throughout the
> Americas.  I doubt that anyone even foresaw this adverse effect at the
> time, or the importation would never have happened the way it did.
>

   Please, is there no one who will step forward with the true story ?  The rumor
has been for decades that this was not triggered by an accidental release, but that
queens were being bred and distributed from the imported african stock. Does anyone
know the truth about this? - or is it academic at this point?

   As for the initial introduction of the african bees into Brazil in the 1950s,
Dr. Kerr's writings show that he was well aware of the temper of many african bees,
and that he personally selected from gentler, more manageable stocks in Africa.
After several of these importations failed because of problems in shipping, he
arranged with a beekeeper (from Angola, I believe) to ship more (unselected)
bees.   Guess what - those arrived alive and healthy, and became the base for his
attempted improvement of Brazilian bee stocks. It's just too bad they were the
nasty ones.

>
> Why other repeated importations, both deliberate & accidental, of African
> bees into the USA did not produce a dominant, vicious, non-hoarding and
> swarmy hybrid like the one that developed in Brazil and recently migrated
> up from South America is a question that deserves some thought.  Perhaps
> there was, somewhere in the import group in Brazil, an unusual individual
> from some sub-variety that is not commonly encountered.

Prob., IMHO, because the "front" of bees, as it moves into an area, is pure pioneer
swarms. Requeening seems to be futile when dealing with these puppies. When faced
with literally thousands of identical swarms flying north, few beekeeping
operations survived. I don't know if anyone ever has figured out if there is a
lethal gene expressed in the first generation of ahb/ehb crosses, but the queens
tend to die. Of course, it could be behavioral, which gets us back to the kinship
recognition  studies of a few years ago (you don't want to go there).

>

> Perhaps also, the bees on the vanguard of the invasion are naturally a
> self-selecting, exaggerated version of the AHB -- those which are most
> swarmy and most restless.

You got it !
   - John, Tucson  (ALL opinions are, of course, my own)