quote:
Well Bob, again to me small black bees, are bees of
temperate zones and first to transition into concerning
racial change from coming out of the tropics; while the
more yellower ones are bees of the tropical zones and
larger yellower ones last to transition out before
changing/transitioning into temperate areas. 

This is false. Italian bees, which are brown to golden colored, are NOT
tropical. They originated in the foothills of the Alps, in Lombardy. The
latitude is around 45, the same as Montreal, Canada. They were exported to
Massachusetts in the 1800s, which is a very cold region, where they were
perfectly capable of over-wintering. There are various native yellow bees
throughout the mediterranean region. 

Native black honey bees are found in various parts of Africa -- in Kenya
(monticolor), in Madagascar (unicolor) and in North Africa (intermissa).
These bees of Morocco & Algeria may have been the origin of the European
black bees; they are certainly related to the bees of Spain (iberica). 

Also, it is the cold climate bees that are generally larger. African and
Asian bees are the smaller ones. This is fully documented in Eva Crane's
books. These statements are based on research done by all the accepted
experts in the field. I have a stack of books by Ruttner, Hepburn, Brother
Adam, Jerzy Woyke, etc. to prove it.

pb

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