Consequences of Selection
The chief difference between the European races or subspecies of bees kept by beekeepers and the African stock is attributable to selective breeding. The Africanized honey bee varieties produced a reversion of behaviour similar to non-domesticated species. The most common race used in the United States today is the Italian bee, Apis mellifera ligustica, which has been used for several thousand years in some parts of the world and in the Americas since the arrival of the European colonists. Beekeepers have tended to eliminate the fierce strains, and the entire race of bees has thus been gentled by selective breeding, from bee species naturally selected by the environment.
In central and southern Africa, the bees had to adapt to the environment of sub-saharan Africa—surviving prolonged droughts and having to defend themselves against other aggressive insects, as well as animals like the honey badger, that also will destroy hives if the bees are not sufficiently defensive. In addition, there was formerly no tradition of beekeeping, only bee robbing.
Read more about this topic: Africanized Bee
Famous quotes containing the words consequences of, consequences and/or selection:
“The consequences of our actions grab us by the scruff of our necks, quite indifferent to our claim that we have “gotten better” in the meantime.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“We are still barely conscious of how harmful it is to treat children in a degrading manner. Treating them with respect and recognizing the consequences of their being humiliated are by no means intellectual matters; otherwise, their importance would long since have been generally recognized.”
—Alice Miller (20th century)
“When you consider the radiance, that it does not withhold
itself but pours its abundance without selection into every
nook and cranny”
—Archie Randolph Ammons (b. 1926)