Hello All,
The January 1990 issue of American Bee Journal has a article on page 32
about " Queen Rearing with Apis Cerana" by Sirwat Wongsiri, Lai You-Sheng
and H. Allen Sylvester.
quote: Since 1957 ,the modern beekeeping methods of Apis Mellifera have been
introduced for use with A. Cerana in China.
quote: After the adoption of modern beekeeping and queen rearing methods,the
colony numbers and honey yield increased year by year.By 1963,honey bee
populations had increased to about 6,000 colonies with a annual yield of
300,000kg honey,or a average of almost 50kg of honey per colony.(Wongsiri et
al. 1986)
Question: wouldn't A.Cerana if introduced into the U.S be able to be kept in
areas of African bees without fear becoming hybrids.

 Wouldn't A.Cerana be able to produce honey without any treatment for varroa
and thus avoid all fears of chemicals in our honey?

As per article couldn't the queen breeders switch over to raising selling A.
Cerana queens and packages?

The beekeeping industry could start on a small scale even in AHB areas with
A.Cerana. All modern beekeeping equipment could be used except we would need
A.Cerana size foundation for our frames. Varroa can only reproduce in
A.Cerana drone brood due to the small worker cell size.

At my location in Missouri i raise and sell Osmia lignaria lignaria and
O. lignaria propinqua for polination. Fact: they fly at times A. Mellifera
won't and one O. lignaria will polinate better than 100 A. Mellifera. i am
on a waiting list to get started with Osmia cornifrons next year.
My point in saying the above is that Osmia cornifrons IS NOT NATIVE of U.S.
and was introduced from Japan in 1977. After 23 years its safe to say the
introduction was a good thing with no problems. Supply is a problem but the
bees are NOT.

Currently there are millions of A.Cerana colonies in Asia to get our start
from. Why not?

For those of you reading bee-l which have never heard my OPINION of why
varroa switched hosts from A.Cerana to A. mellifera i will put in print for
archives. Why would Varroa stay with a colony of A. cerana where it could
only reproduce in the drone cells when  in A. melliferia colonies it could
reproduce in all cells. A choice varroa would later come to regret because
you don't want to KILL your host.
For many years i have been of the opinion a smaller cell size could possibly
limit varroa and control could be done thru IPM. After rereading again the
ABJ article from 1990 i am wondering why not import Apis Cerana. If for not
any other reason but to help beekeepers in AHB areas and get hobbiests in
those areas back. Why not repopulate the feral colonies with A.Cerana?
Looking for a better solution for varroa and African bees!
Bob Harrison U.S.A.