> If you want to talk about meaninglessness, though, a discussion of race would be the best place to start.

I guess we have to agree to disagree here, but it would be difficult for me to disagree more with your statement.  It is like saying that there is no difference between Friesian and Aberdeen Angus cattle, or a toy poodle and a wolf.

Whilst it is true that most colonies here have mixed genetics, the background in the UK leans heavily towards A.m.m. and we see huge differences between, for example, those colonies that are towards the purer end of the A.m.m. spectrum compared with those that are predominantly ligustica.  In this area we saw a large influx of ligustica when Vince Cook became director of the National Bee Unit; he came here from New Zealand, where he was National Apicultural Adviser, and quickly eliminated the dark bees in the Unit's stock by importing 200 ligustica queens from New Zealand and introducing them to their colonies.  These colonies were then migrated around the Stratford area, flooding the countryside with yellow drones.  Twenty or more years later we are still working to eliminate the yellow influence.  Why?

The native dark bees form small colonies that live happily in a single brood British National and are frugal with winter stores (I feed 12-16lb of bakers' fondant at most).
Ligustica around here form large colonies, requiring double brood boxes.  They breed regardless of whether there is any income and will starve if the going gets tough.  They require huge amounts of feed to get them through the winter - the National Bee Unit was feeding 60lbs of sugar per colony!
But the crop from the huge ligustica colonies is not better than that from A.m.m.  Last year I averaged 88lbs per colony on autumn count (and made 50% increase in colonies by splitting) - the UK average was ~32lbs.

Perhaps bees in the U.S. are so hybridised that talk of races is meaningless, but not here - to me it ranks in importance with varroa, in fact perhaps more important now that varroa is under control.

Best wishes

Peter 
52°14'44.44"N, 1°50'35"W

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