Dave wrote:
> I echo Allan's call for some real research

Personally, I wouldn't spend a nickel on it, for two reasons.

First, faulty premise. Looking back to 1987, one can read the original
premise for making small bees. Lusbys saw African Bees coming in the
Arizona desert and hatched their scheme of downsizing the bees. (See
ABJ, July 1987). This was before varroa and the main reason they
wanted smaller bees, they said, was to outwit the Africans.

ACTUAL QUOTES:

> If one acknowledges that AHB are smaller and faster ... then perhaps instead of breeding bigger and slower, bee breeders of tomorrow should strive to breed smaller and faster. If AHB are HWB [hot weather bees] then it would be illogical to fight this HWB with a CWB [cold weather bee].

> it makes perfect sense to combat, one to the other, hot to cold, where overlap occurs as in our 240 zone cuff areas of the world ... Through intensified aggressive field management in the fall with CWB we can offensively hold the AHB in the winter, and in the summer defensively we can hold our own...

> We must be positive in our thoughts; we cannot be negative, We can hold and maintain our bee apiaries if we really try. We must all learn in the future to be complete beekeepers ... All it takes is logic and reason, coupled with out of season breeding to avoid as much as possible AHB drones, while striving to breed smaller and faster, gentler domestic stock.

> We can hold our apiaries against the AHB I truly believe if we all work together, helping each other in grafting situations. We cannot let this country become Africanized and I don't think in the end we will!

END QUOTES.

None of this was borne out, Arizona became completely Africanized. The
approach down there is "can't beat 'em, join 'em". They're just bees
like you got, only little. Don't fuss about the DNA and all, that's
scientific mumbo jumbo.

Second reason, no amount of scientific research is going to matter to
people who are anti-science. I mean, there are still millions of
people who think evolution is an unproven theory, promulgated by
atheists.

Meanwhile, other folks are pursuing entirely different lines of study:

> We present a new approach based on honey-bee mating optimization to estimate the state variables in distribution networks including distributed generators. The proposed method considers practical models of electrical equipments such as static var compensators, voltage regulators, and under-load tap changer transformers, which have usually nonlinear and discrete characteristics. The feasibility of the proposed approach is demonstrated by comparison with the methods based on neural networks, ant colony optimization, and genetic algorithms for two test systems, a network with 34-bus radial test feeders and a realistic 80-bus 20 kV network.

"Application of honey-bee mating optimization on state estimation of a
power distribution system including distributed generators"
by Taher NIKNAM (Electronic and Electrical Department, Shiraz
University of Technology, Shiraz, Iran)

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