In article <[log in to unmask]>, Peter
Borst <[log in to unmask]> writes
>Where did this information come from? Hepburn (1998) has them
>originating somewhere in modern day Iran, with the European and African
>types branching from there.  Brother Adam assumed honey bees came to
>Europe from Africa.

Hello Peter,

One of my biggest weaknesses is that I just do not keep hold of records
of exactly where I got any particular piece of information. I do
appreciate that this weakens my hand in such a debate and lays me open
to demolition by the simple and justifiable request for a reference.

I cannot cite references as others are well able to do because I am not
that into the minutiae of the subject and do prefer to keep most of what
strikes me as significant in my head. Sometimes a piece of info is so
striking that you remember exactly where you got it and why it was so
important. Not really so in this case as given experiences worldwide
thus far, scutellata are not likely ever to appear in my unit.

However, after making my feeble excuse for not being able to quote a
source I can say that it was a combination of things relating to
dominance of africanised bees in the Americas and some South African
persons writings on the subject from a couple of years back at least.

However, scutellata being a newer race, and the statements of the
sources you cite are NOT mutually exclusive. Nowhere have I heard that
all racial traits and genetic advances are from a single original
geographical point.

Honeybees, like humans, MAY all turn out to be of distant African
origin. They may turn out to be Asian. What this does NOT mean is that a
mutation, that which gives 'scuts' their advantage in suitable areas,
could not occur at any point in the whole territory covered by
honeybees. (I appreciate by the way that it is a double negative to put
it that way but it fits the context better.)

The scuts can fly earlier and faster due to their energy conversion
method (citations placed previously by another poster). In their normal
range this gives them an advantage, and they oust, by a variety of
mechanisms, the bees already extant in the territory. This is NOT likely
to happen in reverse, as there is no reason that a better adapted bee
should be ousted by a less well adapted one. Hence the dominant bee
(naturally speaking) in an area is likely to be that best adapted to the
area which has THUS FAR got there. There may be better out there, but
just never encountered the territory. If our native blacks turned up
with the scutellata energy conversion system, allied to their good
properties for our environment, they too might take over in the northern
lands.

It is this dominance that makes me favour the 'scuts are the newer'
arguments as I cannot see how the other types would oust bees with the
trait, and thus conclude, albeit on sketchy information, that the major
expansion of bees from their point of origin (wherever that might lie)
carried only the older, less efficient, genetics. If they had carried
the better system for energy use the types we currently have could not
have come to dominate.

Although there is a research deficit regarding African bees in their
native range outside South Africa, it appears that a large swathe of
tropical and sub tropical Africa north of the Cape bees stronghold in
the extreme south corner (in the target zone for limiting latitudes
between 30 and 35 depending on local conditions) is occupied by a
relatively undifferentiated bee, which has possibly evolved its critical
change in relatively recent times and swept a whole host of local races
and sub races away in its path.

I have heard academics argue that lack of differentiation is a measure
of age, insofar as the less variants there are the longer the type has
been around and for the best to eliminate the rest. I have heard the
exact opposite from others, where local conditions over a long period
(we are talking many thousands of years here) give rise to a range of
locally or regionally adapted races and sub races. Take your pick. Not
an academic, but I prefer the latter.

I don't pretend to have any definitive info on this issue, but
appreciate its importance to our North American friends.


--
Murray McGregor