Peter and all:
How will this effect how perception is about AHBs by the
way, not that I haven't been saying this for years in the
Saga I did? But Bill just posted this over on the
OrganicBeekeepers list so thought you might like to read it
here. For you see bees are bees and rule of thumb always
has been, if it is hot requeen it and to me the birds and
the bees are free and always will be.

Happy reading, but how will it fit with what Florida is
doing?

Dee

Now from Bill posted today:

FWIW. I'm not qualified to judge that, and I'm not ashamed
to say so.

http://researchnews.wsu.edu/physical/149.html

Honey Bee Genome Project Reveals Possible African Origin of
All Honey Bees
An international consortium of researchers announced this
week that it has
finished sequencing the entire genome -- all the DNA -- of
the honey bee.
Washington State University entomologist Walter S. (Steve)
Sheppard, a
member of the sequencing team, also co-authored a study
that strongly
suggests that honey bees originated in Africa and spread to
Europe and Asia
during at least two major migratory periods during their
history.

...The honey bee genome results appear in this week's issue
of the journal
Nature, and the report on honey bee origins appears in this
week's issue of
Science magazine.

..."It's a huge amount of data, and the statistical basis
for how to analyze
it is in the developmental stages," said Sheppard.

...By looking at more than 1000 SNPs in the DNA of each of
hundreds of
individual bees, the researchers were able to develop a
distinctive DNA
profile for bees from each region.

...Sheppard said the traditional view of honey bee origins
held that they
first arose in western Asia, the area comprising
current-day Turkey,
Afghanistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzistan, and migrated from
there to Europe
and Africa.

Among the surprising results of the new analysis was that
the type of honey
bee common to northern and western Europe is more closely
related to
modern-day African honey bees than to its geographical
neighbors in central
Europe. Such discoveries led the researchers to conclude
that honey bees
probably originated in Africa and migrated into Asia and
Europe on at least
two different occasions.

After hundreds of thousands of years in their new homes,
with no
interbreeding among the populations in different areas,
they evolved into
today's subspecies whose DNA is unique enough that the SNP
analysis can tell
to which group they belong.The researchers also examined
honey bees captured
at various sites in the U.S. They found that the SNP
analysis could track
the invasion of "Africanized" bees, which have both
European and African
subspecies in their pedigree.

* All honey bees in the Americas are relative newcomers,
Sheppard said.
Human settlers first brought western European subspecies in
1622. A
Mediterranean subspecies was imported in the mid-1800s, and
an African
subspecies was brought to Brazil in 1956. *[My emphasis for
those skimming
only--note that is HUMAN settlers, not HUHMAN :) ]

Regards,

Bill [only] Huhman





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