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Date: | Sat, 10 Feb 2007 11:30:30 -0500 |
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At first blush, the South Africa situation may not hold much meaning for
honey bees elsewhere, but the identification issue can be applied to the
present "Africanized" bee situation in the Americas. The so-called "hybrid
zone" in Argentina, which includes both European or African subspecies or
mixtures may be the same kind of phenomenon as found between capensis and
scutellata. With reference to the "Africanized" bee in the Americas, Dr.
Hepburn said in his judgement they were simply nasty, little bees from
Pretoria in most of their tropical range, when queried for his opinion at
the meeting. How the Africanized honey bee will play out in temperate
North America is still in question and is one of the quintessential
beekeeping conundrums that must be faced in the future. It is of more than
passing interest that Africanized honey bees in Arizona have in fact been
determined to have a higher degree of thelytoky than their European
sisters. This suggests a biological reason for requeening failures
sometimes reported by beekeepers trying to introduce European stock into
tropical America. For more, see the review of the 2001 Apimondia
Congress in South
Africa: http://www.squidoo.com/beekeeping_associations/
Malcolm T. Sanford
Professor Emeritus, University of Florida
http://beeactor.vze.com
352-336-9744
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