There seems from the discussion to be no certain way of telling whether bees
are of African descent (hot or not) or whether they are of one of the
European races and crosses from them. I find this surprising as it is relatively
easy to distinguish between the European races by looking at a range of
physical and behavioral characteristics. The most convenient of these in many ways
is the pattern of wing veins, although the more characteristics are examined
the more certain the result will be.
Freidrich Ruttner in his book Breeding Techniques and Selection for Breeding
of the Honeybee goes into some detail on this but he is concerned mainly
with mellifera, ligustica and carnica and doesn't provide the indices for
scutellata. It might be a worthy project for a bee lab to extend Ruttner's work in
this direction.
With that tool people would have certainty rather than speculation to guide
them.
Chris
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