>
>
> >I think it's better to find a bee that seems to do well and breed from
> that bee and avoid the alluring discussion that a particular bee belongs to
> a given subspecies.  Especially if you use color as a determination of race
> since color is a minor characteristic genetically.


I was invited to speak to the British Bee Breeders Association a few years
ago.  A number of members were distraught about the presence of some yellow
bees being brought in.  I suggested an opinion similar to that of Bill's
above--so long as they are selecting for colonies that perform well in
their local environment, the breeding program will tend to weed out any
alleles that are not adaptive to that environment, and favor alleles that
are.  If yellowness is non adaptive, both natural selection and bee breeder
selection will tend to remove it from the breeding population's gene pool.

-- 
Randy Oliver
Grass Valley, CA
www.ScientificBeekeeping.com

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