>>there is no real difference between feral colonies and colonies in hives.

There are a lot of generalities in this discussion, and from where I sit,
both parties may be right.  As for who is wrong, maybe both are wrong, too.
I don't know.

What I do know is that in some areas, where bee habitat is good and human
influence slight, feral bees been able to adapt to the area, and, once
established, have proven extremely hard to dilute or eradicate.  Varroa may
have changed this, and -- in a few cases -- it may not.  The problem is that
all we have to go on is reports, and most of them are anecdotal and not very
scientific, or exhaustive.  From what we see in many areas, we can deduce
that varroa has wiped out all the ferals, but we do not actually know, and
America is huge and diverse.  There may be pockets of survivors.

In areas where human influence (beekeeping) is great, we will see much less
feral influence, if any, and that is where we find it easy to make
observations.  So, we need to visualise and understand the regions -- and
possibly unique stocks -- each member is experiencing, and realise that
there may be areas that are completely different from what we personally
know, and admit that our own experience may not apply there.  We also need
to remember that there is quite credible evidence that bees mate selectively
in ways we only slightly understand.   We have general understandings, but
once again we do not very well understand the significant exceptions and
special cases, so there may well be local populations in some areas that do
not interbreed entirely bidirectionally with other nearby stocks.

On the other hand, there is sufficient diversity in even escaped domestic
stocks -- especially in the offspring and random crosses from selected
and/or hybrid stocks -- that an untrained observer catching and keeping only
a small number of hives and could be fooled into thinking that he is seeing
patterns where, in fact there is only randomness.  We really do not know
what is out there in 100% of the cases.  These days, it is pretty certain
that AHB is distributed more widely than the maps indicate, as are other
genetics.  It's a real soup.

Anyhow, I am reminded of the blind men and the elephant, and tend to think
that each of us has his own perspective.

allen

We think in generalities, but we live in detail.
            -- Alfred North Whitehead

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