In this interesting study, different subspecies of honey bee were
compared to see if the type of collected is related to the type of
bee. Evidently, it isn't.


Comparison of pollen spectra collected by four different subspecies of
the honey bee Apis mellifera by Kirsten Köpplera, et al

Colonies belonging to 4 subspecies of Apis mellifera, namely A. m.
capensis, A. m. ligustica, A. m. carnica and A. m. mellifera were
placed, one colony per subspecies, at 5 sites with a high floral
diversity in the Taunus region in Germany. A total amount of 4008.3 g
of pollen loads were trapped during 3 seasons and 214 different pollen
types were identified.

The comparison of pollen spectra did not result in a separation of the
subspecies. Date of sampling and sampling site, however, had a major
effect on the composition of pollen samples. Furthermore, subspecies
were not significantly different in the structure of dominance,
evenness and diversity of pollen types.

-- 
Peter L. Borst

******************************************************
* Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at:          *
* http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm  *
******************************************************