> That ain't all they've been smoking. Based on *cave paintings* they
> have determined that there were honey bees here before the white man,
> that the workers of those bees could raise queens like the Cape bee,
> and they have descendents of these same bees in their outfit.
> Instead of the other explanation: the bees came from Mexico in the past
ten
> years.

Well.  I have no evidence that they have been smoking anything except their
bees.  I found them sober and sincere and able to pull out references
instantly on any topic.

Be that as it may -- or may not, perhaps you failed to notice that your
reply in no serious way addresses all the quotes you included with your
post, so I am hoping you will deal with these issues one by one, and with
documentation in a detailed and scientific manner, as you usually do.  We
will all benefit by a rational and reasoned rebuttal, now that we have been
entertained by irony.

There are many interesting things that are claimed by Lusbys, and one is
that the thelytoky characteristic was there (and assumed by them to be
normal) before the 'AHB' front went through and that Dee has videotape and
other documentation in which she demonstrated this to USDA people before
they were fully aware of thelyoky in Arizona bees, and had contracts with
them on this topic to boot.  Moreover some element of the stock they
maintain, in addition to thelytoky, apparently demonstrates inexplicable
morphometrics and unique veination, to this day.

I understand that the cape bee is causing havoc with scutellata in South
Africa, but the Lusbys seek this characteristic and find it works for them.
Is this not odd?

There is much to this whole matter that does not fit into a nice neat
package or submit to neat classification.

> Remember Occam's Razor?

Yes, I'm glad you brought that up.  This postulate is stated in many ways,
but fundamentally requires that we give preference to whichever explanation
that is the simplest but that also FITS ALL THE FACTS.

Do we know all the facts?

The Truth is Out There...

allen
The hand, having written, moved on...  It was mentioned to me that some
visitors to http://www.internode.net/honeybee/diary/ did not immediately see
the Lusby visit pictures.
Time passes and now it is necessary to click back several pages in the
diary.