There is no reason to expect that some of the nuclear genome of Africanized bees won't introgress into the northern population of bees. If a trait exhibited from an allele is adaptive, it will tend to increase in frequency in the population. Pete made the trait of extreme defensiveness non adaptive to that colony. Other beekeepers will likely do the same (I sure do). Varroa selects for traits that are adaptive for the bees against the mite. Thus, I'd expect to see some of those traits of the Africans move into the feral populations of North America. The Africans tend to swarm a great deal--this may be non adaptive where winter nectar dearths are long. My point is that Africanization will not necessarily move in as a package, but parts of it likely will. Think also of this: initially, the invasion of the Africans into southern North American benefited from varroa, which had recently cleared the competing feral European bee stocks out of nest cavities--leaving those cavities open, to the benefit of the Africans. As European feral populations gain greater mite resistance, they may be able to outcompete the Africans at the northern limits of the African's range, and push the Africans further south. -- Randy Oliver Grass Valley, CA www.ScientificBeekeeping.com *********************************************** The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html