Hello Garth,
 
Could you please let me know if you are certain who in Europe is keeping
Cape bees? This bees shouldn't be kept for research purposes outside of
their native environment at all!!! If they spread outside South Africa I
guess their effect on commercial beekeeping as we know it would be
devastating. If you can confirm this we must move real fast to convince the
people that keeps them to KILL THEM AT ONCE. We already have many problems
with Varroa and Africanized bees to add one more unpredictable disaster.
 
During 1993 I met 3 Southafrican beekeepers in the USA, when they made a
visit to the queen operation I was working for in Georgia, I recall their
names were Dirk De Klerk, Falconer Brett and Theunis Engelbrecht. They
admitted they were in the verge of collapse because of this bees. They had
come to see whether by means of commercial queen rearing they could stop
these bees.
 
Regards.
 
 
Martin Braunstein
Malka Cabania Apicola
e-mail: [log in to unmask]