Hi All.

    There's something here that doesn't make a lot of sense, at least from
the other side of the Atlantic. We're being told that AHB and EHB may not
hybridise effectively, even that they may be separate species. That implies
that there should be clear differences between bees that, after all,
originate from several thousand miles apart. Yet we're also told that the two
are 'difficult' to tell apart, that it's a specialist job to distinguish
them. I've tried to find out exactly how you distinguish them
morphometrically, and had no real success. These two data appear to be
contradictory.

    How can bees originating from two distinct, unconnected populations,
which have developed over, I would imagine, millions of years, without
interbreeding, in very different environments, and which remain genetically
distinct, be so hard to tell apart? If this hypothesis is correct, then they
should be as easy to distinguish morphometrically as A.m. mellifera and A. m.
ligustica.

Regards,

Robert Brenchley

[log in to unmask]
Birmingham, UK.