> It will be interesting to see what Dr DeLaney's research shows for 'feral' colonies in the south.

Delaney has already published work which shows that diversity has not been impaired in the general US bee population:

This research suggests that the current
queen production practices of producing 1,000,000
daughter queens from 500 queen mothers, is having
little effect on genetic diversity due to drift and the
inflow of new alleles. 

However, they state:

the maintenance of
adequate genetic diversity in U.S. commercial honey bee
populations will probably depend on the future inflow of
new alleles.

Which may or may not be true, as the honeybee has a very high rate of recombination which creates diversity in the existing population. Be that as it may, I support the importation of honeybee stock from Europe as undertaken by Sue Cobey.

SOURCE
Ann. Entomol. Soc. Am. 102(4): 666Ð673 (2009)

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