>
>     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.
>

I don't think so. If one were to scale a horse and a donkey down to the
size of a honeybee, you may find that it would be a little difficult
(but not impossible) to tell them apart by appearance. All that it takes
is a small number of genetic differences that cause problems durring the
reproductive process.

I recall a study where fruit flies were isolated and after several
generations could not reproduce with members from another group.