>  Despite this, some of the most widely distributed feral matrilines of A.m.m. developed high defensiveness.

I have seen colonies with the classic A.m.m. response and the classic African response. The former let up about twenty feet from the hive where the latter go hundreds of yards. That is a significant difference in behavioral response. This is documented throughout the regions which have become Africanized. 

> This depends upon what was analyzed--nuclear DNA or mitochondrial DNA.  

mtDNA is useful for tracking the matriline, I suppose, but the behaviors reside principally in the nuclear DNA. There is a world of difference between using DNA for identification purposes (paternity suits, etc) and assigning function to genomic regions. While it seems pretty clear there are genomic regions which govern behavior, it's far less clear which ones are important and how they perform theses functions.

> We will need stock from which to breed.

I recently conversed with Dr. Rinderer on the topic of importing bees from Puerto Rico. There are enough different lines of bees present in the US that he regards such a notion as "silly" (his choice of words). I think John Harbo and others would probably agree that modern breeding will succeed by a more rigorous approach, rather than hunting the bushes for isolated pockets of survivors. They may be surviving entirely due to environmental conditions, rendering them useless as breeding stock. 

> Queens only breed with drones from the immediate (within flight distance) surrounding area, thus allowing for the development of races.

The so-called races were isolated by geographic boundaries for many thousands of years. In the US, there is no equivalent degree of isolation, either geographically or over time. In fact, as we know, the bees on Santa Cruz island, despite isolation, were unable to evolve resistance to varroa and were 100% wiped out, leaving 0% survivor stock.

> I'd be careful about what you publicly presume : )

I am pretty comfortable discussing things openly here on Bee-l. Anyone who wants can hurl insults this way. As my friend Allen used to say (before he signed off Bee-l) -- if everyone is agreeing, nobody is thinking. 

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that if bees in the Southwest are surviving without varroa treatment, it's probably due to African genes. It's true in Calif, Arizona, and Texas, why would it be different in Utah? 

By the way, you didn't address my assertion that DNA testing fails to differentiate African from European in hybrids. What do you think about that?

PLB

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