At 9:24 -0700 1/28/02, Allen Dick wrote:
>One thing I noticed is that, although you usually cite authors, the
>two sites given here appear to be anonymous

Right. Sorry about the long posts, but I just wanted to make clear
that beekeeping has a very long history in the Americas -- but NOT
with Apis mellifera. If Apis mellifera had been here already, the
Spanish, Dutch, etc. would have had no need to import it. According
to Eva Crane, in "The Archaeology of Beekeeping" (pp. 61-62)

"honey hunting and beekeeping in hives were already developed in
prehistoric times, although not many records of it survive. There are
no native honeybees in America, and the bees used were various
species of stingless bee (Meliponini); they build rather amorphous
nests from which honey and wax were harvested. The earliest surviving
written account is by Bishop Diego de Landa who arrived in Yucatan in
1549."

Another thing my long quote emphasized was the need for beeswax by
the Spanish church. They were ready to exploit whatever sources of
wax were here, but finding them inadequate, they undertook to import
bees from Europe. If the New World had suitable bees, the explorers
definitely would have adopted them, like they did tomato, potato,
tobacco, and other New World treasures.

Further, if some form of Apis Mellifera had been here, someone would
have seen it and written about it. But even so, unless it was
extremely useful, it would have been supplanted by the Italian bee.
Remember, the black bee was brought here first, and then when the
Italian bee craze hit, it was all but replaced by "Golden Italians".

(For those who tuned in late, this discussion relates to a comment
that honeybees may have been in the Americas before the conquest by
the Europeans and that the descendents of such bees may still exist
in Arizona.)

--
Peter Borst <[log in to unmask]>