>IMHO, your statement is not logical. Feral bees are not just escapees from >domestic situations, and also vary greatly in their distance (in time) from >civilization. As a parallel, wild horses and dogs do exist, and vary >greatly >from domesticated ones. I thought it was logical, maybe not 100% on the mark though. what other livestock is kept that has total freedom to come and go at will and also mate, divide and increase at will? sure there was a time when feral and domesticed had equal numbers and a time when feral were all the bees, but times have changed and neither one of us can prove just what the breakdown is between the two. I was meerly going on the account by many others that little to no feral hives are found anymore, and with the mites and diseases, few would survive. there are pockets where more feral bees would be found like your tucson area, but that is not the norm. as long as there are managed hives around there will always be escapes' to the 'wild' and then we must ask what is feral. wild horses and dogs have a physical appearance and nature about them that make it easy to distinguish them from domesticated ones. what percent of horses today are wild compared to domesticated ones? 5% even? I'll bet if our domesticated horses where allowed to run free, they would not hesitated to mate with wild horses if given the chance. bees do it all the time without us even knowing about it. I didn't know one could tell the difference between 'wild' and domesticated honeybees. how is this done? mark _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp.