> Would they do any better in any of these locations in terms of survival,
yield and/or disease resistance if allowed to adapt to the local
environment?
I challenge someone to make a list of traits or features that would tangibly
improve a colony's survival in each "local environment", as I don't know of
any such list for ANY "local environment".
a) The VA mountains and NYC rooftops are essentially the same conditions.
Abundant forage, tolerable winters for the bees, temperate climates. 2400
ft of elevation at 37 degrees N equates nicely with being on a small island
off the eastern seaboard of the USA at 40 degrees N.
b) Jamacia is a tropical island. Somethings always blooming. Rainy season
is not a total washout. Modern "Disney-fication" for the touristicas mean
lots of introduced plants that fill in the gaps in the blooms of the native
plants.
c) The Canaries are mostly desert islands it only rains a total of about 30
days of the year, so the conditions are similar to Arizona in the USA. The
weather is so amazingly clear, they were the backup site for the
Thirty-Meter Telescope, until the courts refused to allow the use of public
lands for science. The existing Gran Telescopio Canarias at 10.4 meters,
is now being called the "Thirty FOOT Telescope" as a joke among the local
astronomy gang, as it seems certain that the TMT will be on Maunakea, in
Hawaii, and the GMT down at Las Campanas in Chile.
Its clear that I need an "all-terrain bee", but I can't even say what might
be "doing better", as diseases are the same between sites, survival is no
better one place or another, and yields are more a weather thing than a
function of any of my work as a beekeeper. I don't make stupid rookie
mistakes, and that seems to be about as much as I can say about the impact I
can have on the smallest operation spread over the largest footprint ever
known to beekeeping. The bees provide all the enjoyment/entertainment I
could ever ask, and that's enough.
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