I appreciated your taking the time to find the information and to post it to
BEE-L

Generally, when material is being cited from the www, BEE-L guidelines
request simply giving URLs rather than cut-and-paste entire texts, since the
text is available from the original site and not all members will want to
receive or read the bulk of the material.  This may be something we need to
reconsider, though since websites change and some things like this are nice
to have in the archives.

> http://netcall.com.mx/abejas/en/history.htm
> http://ag.arizona.edu/pubs/insects/ahb/inf1.html

One thing I noticed is that, although you usually cite authors, the two
sites given here appear to be anonymous.  That is a shame, since we have no
way of knowing whether the work there is researched or simply a
regurgitation of the same old sources.

Historical information is often hard to interpret, since one author will
quote or paraphrase (or even interpret) another and so on and so on,
resulting in what appears to be numerous distinct sources being, in fact,
only one source.

It is possible, even likely, that you are right, but there is always the
chance that there is some unreported information, or that such terms as
'common bees' in one of the articles has a meaning other than what we
understand.  In reading the accounts from the past, we must always make
assumptions --and we all know about assumptions.

It is always fun to speculate as long as we recognise that we are
speculating, and as long as we wait for good proof before believing too
strongly the products of our own speculation.

Thanks for keeping us thinking.

allen