> the heart of my difficulty with Dr. Seeley's 
> observations of the feral bee habits for 
> "success"... being touted as the *solution* 
> to saving the honey bee.

The inherent dichotomy is that "success" for a honey bee colony is mostly
the opposite of what the beekeeper would call "success".

"Saving the honey bee" does not imply that any "surviving" lines of bees
will be as "productive" or as "manageable" as beekeepers would like.  What
should be clear is that "survival" has to be possible for colonies in trees,
not just for managed colonies.

As "Blonde" sang, "Girls just wanna have fun", so, for example, the mere
chance to successfully reproduce via swarming is more important than
survival itself, as colonies risk their own survival by putting out a swarm,
even though Seeley's own data estimates a swarm's chances of surviving its
first winter at a mere 30%.   Most of the "management" about which
beekeepers pat themselves on the back about simplifies down merely providing
more space than a typical tree hollow, which tends to satisfy the
"productivity/yield" need.

If the beekeeper splits colonies that are about to swarm before they swam,
and does a half-decent job of mite control and basic health care, he has
done just about all that can be done.  Essentially, all "management" beyond
this is specific to the rigors and stresses of pollination, transportation,
and/or crop exploitation. 

> look at the what happened in Brazil. 
> A very small number of queens were 
> used to establish the African population 
> which now thrives all over the Americas.

This is exactly the kind of "success" Seeley was talking about - successful
expansion of the line/breed of bees.  

> the feral category [excludes]
> animals that were genuinely 
> wild before they escaped 
> from captivity."

>There is plenty of evidence that 
> there are unbroken maternal lines of
> wild-living honey bees existing in Americas.  
> They... were arguably imported 
> as "wild types."

But they were imported from Europe as "domesticated" bees in hives by
beekeepers.  Thus, they escaped from their "captivity" by swarming, and
expanded into the "Oak Openings" (James Fenimore Cooper's phrase) well ahead
of the westward expansion of the white man.  So what was "wild" when?  And
where specifically are the bees from the "unbroken maternal lines" found
today?  

> I don't want to change the honey bees. 
> I like them just the way they are. 
> What I want is to get rid of their pests 
> and pathogens.

Man's track record in actually defeating invasive pests and pathogens is
dismal.  I may be out of date, but I think that the only successful
eradication of any ag pest was the Boll Weevil program, which was launched
in the 1970s, and declared a success in the 2000s.  Anyone know of any other
examples?  For humans, smallpox is extinct in the wild, and we are getting
close to eradicating polio, but again, it is very hard to eradicate anything
completely.
 
The pests and pathogens are here, but those who stay on top of the varroa
tend to have colonies that live to pollinate another spring, regardless of
the scary pest/pathogen du jour.

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