Jerry:
Bill found that many of these beekeepers had bees that
> could be traced back  
> to genetic lines of bees distributed from the Baton Rouge
> lab.


Reply:
Yes, I have copies of much of this from when I used to have contract working with USDA Western Region on tech exchange of information. But it is not AHB related......and is why Ed and I ended up doing the world map we did plotting cell size and climatic zones and bees by race/strain in each zone. This phenonoma happens every so many years with weather shifts that run in cycles.......and it is genetically linked in a way. You see there are bees of the topics and bees of temperate zones and this fact has been known for centuries. The bees react like other animals with transitioning into and out of areas during times of climatic changes, just like other animals migrate naturally following nature! This was noted by researches early on, and used to talk about it with other researchers back in the 1980s........Simply put bees of the warmer climates fall back, like disappear, leave, go home, cannot hang out side their normal areas in times of dearth, etc or
 especially stressed times! This mean in bad year bees in say N. America to the yellower side with genetics will not winter as well as darker races strains of honeybees and NAME by man means nothing. Yellow is of tropic, and darker hues of mixing like with Italian, but still of warmer areas like mediterranean, and darker yet like brown to black of the more nothern climates. The bees simply adjust accordingly....so it you live further north and have want pretty yellow bees then what can I say, for they do not technically belong there with climatic transitioning in hard years............

Nothing new! and Bill Wilson noticed the yellower falling back.......Early on even I was told by Baton Rouge and still have letter........."Who would want those squichy small darker bees?" ........but smaller and darker(even the darker orange/brownish) are more bees of cooler climates.......

So if beekeepers want the pretty bright yellow ones, and many artificially  done to produce them..........then let the buyer beware! Especially if buying bees that do not fit ones locality and this used to be taught early on by Benson, and Br Adam, Ruttner and others........though no longer now...............

Dee A. Lusby


      

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