At first blush, the South Africa situation may not hold much meaning for 
honey bees elsewhere, but the identification issue can be applied to the 
present "Africanized" bee situation in the Americas.  The so-called "hybrid 
zone" in Argentina, which includes both European or African subspecies or 
mixtures may be the same kind of phenomenon as found between capensis and 
scutellata.  With reference to the "Africanized" bee in the Americas, Dr. 
Hepburn said in his judgement they were simply nasty, little bees from 
Pretoria in most of their tropical range, when queried for his opinion at 
the meeting.  How the Africanized honey bee  will play out in temperate 
North America is still in question and is one of the quintessential 
beekeeping conundrums that must be faced in the future.  It is of more than 
passing interest that Africanized honey bees in Arizona have in fact been 
determined to have a higher degree of thelytoky than their European 
sisters.  This suggests a biological reason for requeening failures 
sometimes reported by beekeepers trying to introduce European stock into 
tropical America. For more, see the review of the 2001 Apimondia 
Congress  in South
Africa: http://www.squidoo.com/beekeeping_associations/

Malcolm T. Sanford
Professor Emeritus, University of Florida
http://beeactor.vze.com
352-336-9744



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