Peter Barrett wrote that dark bees from England were
imported into the North Island of New Zealand for the first
time in 1839, and they persisted in the centre of that island
as a pure strain. Yellow Italian bees were first imported about
50 years later.
 
I started beekeeping in the central North Island in the mid
1950's at age 12 when I began working on weekends for a
commercial beekeeper who kept Italian bees. To build my
own stocks I often collected swarms and removed wild hives
from trees etc. In areas of native bush the bees were almost
invariably black or near-black, and very prone to attack when
hives were worked. When hived they made beautiful white
cappings to honey combs, due apparently to a small air
space between the honey and the capping. In contrast Italian
cappings were much duller, and sometimes rather greasy in
appearance because the cappings sat right on the honey.
Finding queens of black hives was often difficult because the
bees would frequently rush to the corners of frames held up
for inspection and fall off in clumps. Beekeepers much
preferred the quieter Italians, so black or crossbred queens
were soon replaced with Italians. In general crosses between
black and Italian bees were thought to be more savage than
pure blacks.
The belief among beekeepers was that if Italians were not
mainted by human selection, the black bees would soon
take over. This was thought to be due to a greater flight
speed by black drones, which would mate with virgins before
and to the exclusion of yellow drones. True or not is
uncertain, but black bees were certainly dominant outside
managed hives.
The same situation prevails in the South Island of New
Zealand, where as Peter Barrett says in his 1995 book, the
first bees were imported in 1842. On the west coast where
the rainfall is very high on a narrow strip of bushed lowland
between high mountains and the sea, the wild bees are very
black-and very savage.  One dare not move within several
metres of a black colony for fear of attack.
 
Native bees of New Zealand of which there are about 28
species in the families Colletidae and Halictidae are all black
or near-black (apart from a few yellow spots on a few
species). It seems to me that the climate which is generally
quite changeable, often within a day, favours black, which
fosters rapid warming of bees after cloud and rain. This
selection factor could be responsible for the dominance of
black among our wild honey bees.
 
Peter Barrett, could you please send me your email address
as I have a question for you. - thanks.
 
Barry J. Donovan
Canterbury Agriculture and Science Centre
Lincoln
Private Bag Christchurch
New Zealand.
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