# White Man's Flies--Bees in America



## byron

In order to not go too off topic in a different thread, I thought I'd start a new one. Below is a comment I made and a reply:



byron said:


> America may in fact be the land of milk and honey, but it's only because Europeans brought the cows and the bees.





Michael Bush said:


> The Indians all agree the cows were not here and the horses were not here. I have not heard any of them say the bees were not here.
> 
> I have tried to trace the "White man's flies" story. I can go back through Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and that traces back to Thomas Jefferson. All references seem to trace back to one of these two and Longfellow traces back to Jefferson. But I can find no link back to American Indians, although both claim one. I have found no tribes with that name for a honey bee. All of them I know I can find have a name for Honey bee that is not like the made up names for "wasicu" things like "horse" and "camel" and other things that were foreign. They are just a name. And they have words for honey and beeswax.
> 
> But that is a different discussion.


I'm curious which tribes you found that had names for honey and beeswax.


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## jrbbees

In another thread I made a comment about the Walker County, Alabama Red Neck Tribe(Choctaw) not being considered nobel savages, but it was delete by a culturally challenged modrator, so I ain't repeating here!


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## Michael Bush

I'm Lakota and one of our words for bee is "wichayazipa". Beeswax is "wichayazipa wigli" which means literally "bees fat". Bumble bee is Wichayazipa hinsma. Honey bee is "wichayazipa thunkce" which can also mean honey bee. That is as opposed to words like "wichayazipa zi" (yellow jacket) and "chanhanpi" (sugar).

I ask people from other tribes all the time, and have always gotten similar results. They have words for bees, honey and beeswax that are not made up words like the words for monkey or cow or horse. For instance the word for monkey translates "dog man" (shunka wicasa) and horse is "great dog" (shunkawakan) and cow is "female meat" (pte win) while the word for a buffalo cow changed from "female meat" to "real female meat" (pte winyelo). These are made up names.

I don't know if bees were here already or for how long but some Spanish writings from the 1500s say that honey bees that looked identical to the ones in Spain were native and they go into great detail about all the bees (stingless and otherwise) and hornets and wasps they identified. Possibly the honey bee escaped much earlier from Spanish settlers than people thought or possibly the Chinese brought them back when they colonized California. But I don't think it's a cut and dried thing as it is commonly presented.


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## MichaBees

Acourding to Gabriel Nieto; _"Of the more than 20,000 bee species in the world, including native species, 2,000 are native to Mexico and depend on specific local weather, vegetation and forest conditions. The main differences between the honey produced by Western and native species of honeybee are in flavour, production capacity and colony size.

Honeybees native to Mexico form groups of between one and five thousand worker bees, while colonies of Apis mellifera range from 30,000 to 50,000 in size (hence their importance in pollination).

Native species are easier to handle given that many of them do not sting. This way, small-scale beekeeping is less problematic for communities and cooperatives who rely on the income from resultant products that are distributed in food stores and sold to pharmaceutical and cosmetic firms. However, most of Mexico’s economic activity in the sector is concentrated on Western beekeeping.

Rémy Vandame is a researcher specializing in bees at Mexico’s El Colegio de la Frontera Sur (ECOSUR). ECOSUR’s activities include research about bees’ current situation in Mexico, including risks and new constraints affecting their health and ecosystems. According to Vandame, Mexico’s Ministry of Agriculture has focused its actions on the establishment of bee health programs (for example, to eradicate pests like the Varroa mite, named as a contributing cause of CCD) and to date the results have been positive.

However, as Vandame points out, many challenges still exist.

“The main challenge [for Mexico] is to transfer public resources into conservation activities and nursing native species.”

Vandame recommends that activities include cataloguing native species, over which government agencies have traditionally had no control, and determining the extent to which these species are being affected by global warming.

Furthermore, Vandame believes that the National Forestry Agency needs to focus more on protecting ecosystems as a whole. Reflecting this need, ECOSUR’s future work will centre around evaluating overall land use, strengthening institutional frameworks and establishing policies on agrochemical use that preserve, rather than disturb, natural vegetation."_


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## MichaBees

Some more information I found;

_The true honey bee was not native to the Americas. Prior to Columbus, people in Central and South America collected honey from bees known as "stingless bees." Although stingless bees do actually lack a stinger, they are not completely defenseless. They can inflict painful bites with their mandibles. They also do not produce honey in the same quantity as A. mellifera.

In the early part of the 16th century, the Spanish brought over the first honey bee colonies. English colonists did the same and soon honey bees had escaped into the wild and were buzzing all over North America. In some cases, the honey bees travelled in advance of the European settlers and came in contact with Native American tribes, who dubbed them "white man's flies." By the time the frontier had been settled, late in the 19th century, honey bees were regarded as a natural part of the insect world in North America._


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## sqkcrk

Michael Bush said:


> I'm Lakota and one of our words for bee is "wichayazipa". Beeswax is "wichayazipa wigli" which means literally "bees fat". Bumble bee is Wichayazipa hinsma. Honey bee is "wichayazipa thunkce" which can also mean honey bee. That is as opposed to words like "wichayazipa zi" (yellow jacket) and "chanhanpi" (sugar).


When did these real words come into the language? Was chanhanpi produced and used before Europeans cultivated and processed sugar cane?

There are lots and lots of apis type insects native to the Americas, but, it seems like some seem to be saying that apis mellifera existed here before Europeans brought it w/ them. Seems like a silly thing for Europeans to do, if there were already honeybees here like the ones they had back home. Not that sillier things weren't done. Just that those boats that they trtaveled on were hardly large enuf to be called ships.

Interesting topic.


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## Fusion_power

An argument can be made that honeybees originated in North Africa and spread throughout Europe, parts of Asia, and Africa. During the ice ages, they were forced back closer to the equator, then re-colonized after the ice melted. There is plenty of evidence of viking settlements on the east coast of North America dating back 1000 years or more, however, there is no evidence the vikings brought honeybees. There are plenty of ship manifests showing that honeybees were brought from Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries.

One thing that can be done is a genetic study to find where the highest level of genetic diversity for honeybees exists.

Regardless of when they arrived, there is no doubt in my mind that honeybees were brought over from Europe and/or Asia.

DarJones


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## Hawk

I think the point that Michael Bush was making is that when new things were introduced, one frequently finds conglomerate simile words or terms. When there is an indigenous example, the words or terms are not patched together from familiar concepts. To his list, allow me to offer an example form my own language, Mvskoke (Creek). Horse is eco-rakko which translates to deer big, or big deer when you account for the reverse placement of the modifier. For monkey, we have wotko-este, translating to racoon man, or racoon person. Honey bee is fo. A drone is fo-ue-cawv. A queen is fo-em-mek-ko. Honey comb or bee hive is fo-hute.


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## waynesgarden

sqkcrk said:


> ....There are lots and lots of apis type insects native to the Americas, but, it seems like some seem to be saying that apis mellifera existed here before Europeans brought it w/ them. Seems like a silly thing for Europeans to do, if there were already honeybees here like the ones they had back home.


Perhaps the situation compares to that of the earthworm. There are many types of earthworms native to North America, but their distribution within the US was affected by the last Ice Age. When the European colonists arrived on the shores of the northeastern states, they found no earthworms and therefore simply imported their variety from home. (Unfortunately, their choice is now resulting in the slow destruction of the northern forests as the "gardener's friend" slowly moves into the forests that had been generated without the voracious appetites of worms.)

Is it possible that, while various forms of native honeybees existed in pre-European days, (a 14 million year old fossil of a honeybee was discovered in the southwest recenty,) the colonists simply desired the larger or the more vigorous or the more productive honeybee that they had left behind? 

It doesn't seem a stretch to think that the "white man's flies" were easily recognizable by the first residents as simply being different (larger, more numerous, etc.) from the honeybees they were used to seeing. I wouldn't assume to read into it anything more than that, or stretch the point to say these were the first honeybees they ever saw. Perhaps they were simply different and, correctly, linked to the arrival of Europeans?

My speculations. You can find ample reference to the honeybee fossil, however. It has even been disussed here on Beesource a couple of years ago, when the paper was published.

Wayne


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## WLC

I'd think that the native americans were already very familiar with bees so there would be no reason for them to call them anything else but 'bee' in their own language. 

'white man's fly' sounds like a european american using artisitic license in their writing.


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## byron

Very interesting responses. I have found that it has been documented to have taken 231 years for honey bees brought to the East Coast by Europeans to reach the West Coast. Some may have been brought here earlier and made it to California/Oregon earlier, but as far as what we can prove... *"brought to the east coast of North America in 1622 it would be 231 years before the honey bee reached the west coast. Disease, hostile competitors, harsh climates, and geographical barriers blocked the advance of honey bee and human alike." *

http://www.orsba.org/htdocs/download/Honey%20Bees%20Across%20America.html


The 14 million year old fossil in Nevada is interesting, but we have to remember that fossils of many things from then can be found, but that doesn't mean they were still here when humans came. Lemurs were here, but now exist only in Madagascar, for example. 

Indians having a word for "bees, honey, wax" is also interesting, but we have to remember a few things:

Sometimes Indians used European words for things, sometimes not. Sometimes they did the "made up" words thing, like someone mentioned, sometimes not. Lots of times people were probably clueless about the real meaning, but it sticks. For example, Adirondack means "bark eater" and was an insult for certain tribes in upstate New York who barely made it through winter without starving. There is a tribe in Florida who still call themselves the Miccosukee, even though that's Spanish for "dirty monkey," which is what the Europeans called them after seeing how they lived.

We also know that once we brought the bees to this country, swarms moved ahead faster than we could, in most cases. It has been documented that bees would arrive before settlers, so it is probable that in some cases Indians saw honey bees before they saw their first white man. It would make sense that those particular Indians might have thought up a name for honey and bees all by themselves. 

*"Records left by Thomas Jefferson and others inform us that the advancing bee front was often 100 to 200 miles ahead of civilized outposts." * (http://www.worldandischool.com/public/1989/june/school-resource16203.asp)

and would even show up 5-10 miles ahead of a wagon train on the move. (http://www.on-a-limb.com/2009/04/thursday-thirteen-odd-and-interesting-facts-about-honeybees/)

We also know that there were literally hundreds of different languages spoken by the various bands of hunters and gatherers in this country, it's impossible to say there was or was not an "Indian" word for this or that. Many tribes probably saw horses before they ever saw white men, due to herds being released or escaping and proliferating on their own. So in some cases they had to invent their own word, in others they asked the whites what these creatures were and adopted that word into their own language. 

Looking up Indian language is also problematic since there aren't written histories of anything, and even their modern dictionaries can only be but so accurate since none of them developed their own alphabet independent of whites.


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## waynesgarden

jrbbees said:


> ...[snipped].... but it was delete by a ...[snipped]...modrator, so I ain't repeating here!


Is there anything positive that you can add about honeybees in the Choctaw heritage to this discussion? 

Not sure if your post is supposed to be funny or racist or what, but it has nothing to do with bees. I'm sure a moderator will be by shortly to explain the consequences of challenging moderation publically. It's spelled out in the few rules we are expected to follow, but we all make our own choices.

Now, back to the bee discussion.

Wayne


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## waynesgarden

WLC said:


> ...'white man's fly' sounds like a european american using artisitic license in their writing.


Perhaps but no more so than "bark eater" for example. (As a former Adirondack resident, I've been interested in the discussion of the word Adirondack among Native Americans in the region. No language seems to claim "Adirondack," though it seems like an Anglicized version of a Mohawk phrase for "they eat bark.") So, precise translations over time and the actual pronunciation of the original word or phrase is often blurred.

As for the need for a new term if a word or phrase for honeybee already existed, perhaps, like "bark eater," it was, as it sounds, just a term of derision for the different bees brought to the land by European invaders.

Wayne


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## byron

waynesgarden said:


> As for the need for a new term if a word or phrase for honeybee already existed, perhaps, like "bark eater," it was, as it sounds, just a term of derision for the different bees brought to the land by European invaders.


Hmmm, maybe. But of course most "natives" didn't refer to whites derisively, nor were whites considered invaders at the time. At the time of first contact, most "natives" were in awe of us and the advantages our possessions would bring them. 

Luckily we have science toinform us, as oral legends should never be relied on, without actual facts to back them up, for several reasons. For one thing, expecting Indians today to know whether honey bees were here before the modern wave of Old World settlers arrived is unrealistic. They have no written records. What they consider to be legend could easily be no older than a few centuries. People can also be self serving when developing their own history. Ethnic chauvinism led Chinese officials to hide dozens of Western blond/red haired mummies discovered to have settled in China thousands of years before we were thought to have been there. They were embarrassed to be confronted with the thought that Westerners actually spread civilization to China. 

Oral traditions have often been disproved by good science in the case of "native Americans." There are many instances of tribes claiming that they were never warlike, never engaged in cannibalism, only to have archeologists find burial pits revealing massacres and cannibalism occurring repeatedly. Tribes are also notorious for claiming to have been the sole inhabitants of a particular area, only to have anthropologists and archeologists prove them to be relative newcomers who slaughtered the original inhabitants. Some of this is honest ignorance, some is selective recollections, etc...

It is currently fashionable to say that Indians are the original inhabitants of the country, and their oral traditions, many of them, like to say that they were here since time began, and that they lived at one with each other and their surroundings until mean whites came here with bad things. We are now finding that, of course, humans are not only *not* indigenous to this continent and all came from many different places, but that all of the oldest skeletal remains found in North America are Caucasian and predate the earliest known Indians by thousands of years. 

All of that to say, luckily we can depend on science and not verbal legends to guide us. Neither honey bees nor beekeeping can be found to have existed before Europeans brought them here.


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## sqkcrk

byron said:


> but that all of the oldest skeletal remains found in North America are Caucasian and predate the earliest known Indians by thousands of years.


Really? I am not aware of that. Maybe I have some dates mixed up. Can you please tell us more about that?

On the Mohawk Reservation, near here, Akwesasne, I sell honey to the First Americans IGA. Now we can argue semantics and who was here first and all, but,I would think that those people who inhabited a place before someoine else came along and did so for centuries would be the most Native to that land. Whether, historically, their ancestors came from another land or not.

I know lots of Americans of Anglo-Saxon origin who consider themselves native to our country. Are they? Or are they Naturally Born Citizens? Just to parse a little.


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## waynesgarden

I'm going to guess the answer lies in the 9,300 year old Kennewick Man, an individual whose remains were found in the state of Washington that has some caucasion features but who is said to more closely resemble an ethnic group still surviving in Japan. I haven't seen anyone seriously suggesting Europeans were the first settlers except some unsavory groups, but that is tailgater fodder. 

The thread is getting really off topic for a bee forum so I'll ask, why didn't these Caucasions bring their bees along with them?

Wayne


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## WLC

Kennewick Man

That's just one of a few prehistoric remains of putative caucasians living in north america over 10.000 years ago.

I don't think that they were beekeepers though.


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## waynesgarden

WLC said:


> Kennewick Man......I don't think that they were beekeepers though.


No, probably not. Just trying hard to stay on topic.

Wayne


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## Scrapfe

byron said:


> ... Looking up Indian language is also problematic since there aren't written histories of anything, and even their modern dictionaries can only be but so accurate since none of them developed their own alphabet independent of whites.


I don't know if you consider the alphabet introduced by Sequoyah (who never learned to read, or write English) a knock off of the Greek, Roman or English alphabets but the Cherokee alphabet employs 85 or so characters and yes many characters do some what resemble the Greek or Roman alphabet but most represent different sounds. Supposedly when Sequoyah introduced his syllabary, a majority of the Cherokee Nation learned to read and write Cherokee in less than a year. However, for his pains Sequoyah’s own people branded his face and head, sliced off his ears, and to discourage further witch craft concerning an alphabet they chopped off his fingers.

The English word for correspondence translates into literal Cherokee as, "talking leaves." 
Use the following link to translate the English word ‘bee’ into Cherokee to see how the Cherokee alphabet differs from the English alphabet. http://www.wehali.com/tsalagi/index.cfm?event=search

As a result of this thread I now better understand the longstanding German fascination with American cowboy and Indian culture. The German language is famous in its own right for creating "compound" nouns to describe new things. As an example, hospital in English, translates into the German as Krakenhaus or sick house that makes Krakenwagen or sick car/truck, mean ambulance in English. Slap an umlaut over the first a in the German word for sick Kraken, and you have a new German word the noun Kräken, the English equivalent of injury or hurt. The German word Staubsauger translates into literal English as dust sucker, meaning vacuum cleaner. I can see why ‘white man’s fly’ could be used by Indians to describe a new insect, like the honey bee. Now do you think composer Richard Wagner’s Siegfried and Brünnhilde were modeled on Native Americans??? :scratch:


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## sqkcrk

WLC said:


> Kennewick Man
> 
> That's just one of a few prehistoric remains of putative caucasians living in north america over 10.000 years ago.


Aren't Clovis tools and artifacts dated back 15,000 years?


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## hpm08161947

I certainly don't know much about this, but there are a few preClovis sites. Some going back 37000 years before Clovis - theoretically. One of these sites is the Topper Site in SC. Radiocarbon data from the Topper Site goes back 50000 years.... I watch a lot of NOVA


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## byron

sqkcrk said:


> Aren't Clovis tools and artifacts dated back 15,000 years?


 The "Clovis first" model has been firmly put to bed in recent years. You may want to update your research by looking up "pre-clovis." You'll find stuff like this and this.






sqkcrk said:


> Really? I am not aware of that. Maybe I have some dates mixed up. Can you please tell us more about that?


Oh, I'd love to, trust me, but it would be so off topic the thread would be "punished" for it, if you know what I mean. 




Scrapfe said:


> I don't know if you consider the alphabet introduced by Sequoyah (who never learned to read, or write English) a knock off of the Greek, Roman or English alphabets


Basically. I only said that Indians never developed their own alphabet independently of us, and they didn't.

This guy you call Sequoyah wasn't anymore Indian than he was German. He was a half-breed named George Gist. He joined the U.S. Army to fight against other Indians (the Creeks) and felt like a dumbie because he couldn't read military orders or letters from home like all the white soldiers could, so he made up an alphabet. He still did more in that regard than anyone else in that area of things (for Indians), but lets not pretend it would ever have happened if George wasn't surrounded by white culture and had the advantage of at least half of his genes being German. Germans can be quite the sticklers for perfection, even though it appears George's dad was a degenerate.

http://www.fortpayne.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=92&Itemid=167

http://www.exploresouthernhistory.com/sequoyah.html

But yeah, to stay on the topic of bees, I don't know why earlier waves of Old World explorers didn't bring their bees with them. I don't know if Asians were engaged in beekeeping back then, but if so, why didn't the first "natives" to arrive here bring theirs? I guess they were half starved and just desperately following trails of buffalo turds all the way and didn't realize they wouldn't be going home anytime soon.


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## sqkcrk

byron said:


> Oh, I'd love to, trust me, but it would be so off topic ...


Ain't you ne'er heerd a PM? Send me a mess.


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## WLC

O.K.
I give up.
What's the Solutri word for bee? Neanderthal's fly? 

I'm still not convinced of the etiology of 'white man's fly'. I think that some writer made it up.


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## waynesgarden

WLC said:


> I'm still not convinced of the etiology of 'white man's fly'. I think that some writer made it up.


You can start your research with Paul Dudley, once the Attorney General of Massachusetts. He is quoted as having written in a letter in 1721: "the Aborigines have no word in their Language for a Bee, as they have for all animals ... aboriginally of the Country, and therefore for many Years called a Bee by the name of English Man's Fly." 

In "The World History of Beekeeping and Honey Hunting," Eva Crane cites this quote and also in "Notes on Virginia," Thomas Jefferson discusses stingless honey bees from Brazil and, referring to the European bee: "The bees have generally extended themselves into the country, a little in advance of the white settlers. The Indians therefore call them the white man's fly..." 

In "Peter Kalm's Travels in North America, 1748 to 1751," Kalm writes of bees being referred to as "English flies." (Kalm also mentions that honeybees cannot live in cold areas such as Canada.)

Wayne


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## byron

sqkcrk said:


> Ain't you ne'er heerd a PM? Send me a mess.


Hmm, actually, now that I think about it, I can stay on topic with it. Since some folks have theorized that there were honey bees in North America before the recent wave of Europeans, it is still valid to suppose that some Old World explorers/settlers did, in fact bring bees here from the old world. I've never seen any evidence of that, but since it's possible, we could consider all of the other evidence of pre-Columbus arrivals here from across the Atlantic. 
Here are a tiny handful:

La Jolla Skeletons

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/05/ucsd-skeleton-fight/
SAN DIEGO — Two ancient skeletons uncovered in 1976 on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, during construction at the home of a University of California chancellor, may be among the most valuable for genetic analysis in the continental United States. Dated between 9,000 and 9,600 years old, the
exceptionally preserved bones could potentially produce the oldest complete human genome from the continent.

But only if scientists aren’t barred from studying them.

Before samples can be extracted for genetic analysis, the scientists fear administrators will give the bones to politically powerful local Native Americans who could permanently block study.

Scientists say UC is overlooking two key points. First, there has been no official determination the bones are actually from ancestors of modern Native Americans. *Though many tribes believe their history goes further back, scientists can only confidently trace the ancestry of Native Americans to about 7,000 years ago.*

.....scientific evidence shows skeletons around this age are not always related to those who now live near burial sites. For example, last year Willerslev sequenced the genome of a 5,000-year-old man in Greenland and found he was descended from Siberian ancestors, not today’s Greenland tribes.

UCSD scientists determined the La Jolla skeletons are not culturally affiliated to any tribe.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Kennewick Man

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennewick_Man

In February 2004, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that a cultural link between any of the Native American tribes and the Kennewick Man (9,000-12,000 year old Caucasian sleleton) was not genetically justified, allowing scientific study of the remains to continue. 

----------------------------------------------------
Spirit Cave Mummy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_Cave_mummy 

The Spirit Cave mummy is the oldest human mummy found in North America. It was discovered in 1940 in Spirit Cave, thirteen miles east of Fallon, Nevada by the husband-and-wife archaeological team of Sydney and Georgia Wheeler. The mummy has long red hair.

------------------------------------------

Lovelock Mummy

http://first-americans.blogspot.com/2008/01/chapter-9-spirit-cave-mummy-lovelock.html

Over 9,000 years old, and Caucasoid. Located in same area where ancient Paiute Indian legends say the* Paiutes “exterminated” a light skinned, red haired tribe *who spoke a different language in ancient times. A complete news interview with a California News station (KCRA-3) from the mid-90’s is included. 

This interview mentions the fact that these people were “here thousands and thousands of years before the Indians” and the archaeologist interviewed says “these are Caucasoid traits.”

----------------------------------
Iron Age America

http://ironageamerica.blogspot.com/

Shawnee Indians told a representative of the governor of Colonial Virgina that they could not give Virginians permission to settle in Kentucky because the region was "haunted by the ghosts of the Az Gens, a people "from the Eastern Sea (Atlantic Ocean).

In March 1997, the Paiute-Shoshone Tribe of the Fallon Reservation and Colony made a Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) claim of cultural affiliation with the artifacts.
Further study determined that the mummy exhibits Caucasoid characteristics resembling the Ainu, although a definitive affiliation has not been established. 

----------------------------------------------------

http://www.gloriafarley.com/

The Anubis Caves, Heavener Runestone, etc...
Celtic and Viking runes, Phoenician petroglyphs, Phoenician/Greek/Roman coins, etc...all found in America.

------------------

But did they bring their bees with them? Who knows?


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## Mtn. Bee

Read something in either ABJ or Bee Culture about a year ago on the find of a honey bee fossil in NA, which ruled out the theory of no native honey bees in NA.
Was glad to read that as I had been telling folks that they were not here until brought over the big water.


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## waynesgarden

byron said:


> Kennewick Man
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennewick_Man
> 
> .....the Kennewick Man (9,000-12,000 year old Caucasian sleleton)



While many of your links aren't working, you seem to enjoy citing Wikipedia as an authority (just as you did in your thread on top bar hives.)

While Wikipedia, the New Republic and other "sources" you cite call the Kennewick Man "Caucasian," forensic anthopologists from Middle Tennessee State University, studying the remains recently, noted that while he had some facial features common in a Caucasion, it was closer in appearance to the Ainu an ethnic Asian group currently still in existance in Japan. The DNA results from the tests done in 2000 show no know link with Kennewick and any other known group, including Caucasions.

Stanford's hypothesis of Europeans sailing the Atlantic pre-Clovis, as far back as more than 15,000 years ago, is only that, his hypothisis based on a similarity of stone carved tools, a hypothesis not generally accepted by archaeologists. I would assume this to be because of a notable lack of plausable evidence.

Real science may eventually bring to light new facts, just as the pre-Clovis discoveries are, but until then, the vested interest that some have in promoting unproven pre-historic European schemes will have to be seen as capitalizing on the merest of speculation.

Wayne


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## WLC

Wayne:

The problem with those citations is that they don't help with the etiology of 'white man's fly' or 'English fly'.

We know that the colonials were in contact with many different tribes. So, which tribes used the term 'white man's fly' and which ones 'English fly'?

So, what did the tribes in territories held by Spain refer to Honeybees as? 

'Spanish flys'?

It's clear from the responses of some of the posters familiar with a number of native american languages that at least some of the tribes had a word for 'bee'.

Dudley, Jefferson, and Kalm could be mistaken. I wouldn't call the citations scientific evidence.

In fact, I would call them 'biased' simply because they didn't bother to specify which group of native americans used the term 'white man's fly' or 'English fly'.

It's one of those facts that didn't get checked.


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## WLC

Byron, 

I'm convinced that one day it will be accepted that a group of people crossed the Atlantic to bring Clovis technology to the Americas. But, that day has yet to arrive.


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## sqkcrk

Mtn. Bee said:


> which ruled out the theory of no native honey bees in NA.


No one of any standing ever really said that there were no native BEES here in NA before Europeans arrived. There are lots and lots of native bees, such as Bumblebees, aka bumbus bumbus and Hilyctid bees, aka hilyctidae, and also the stingless bee, aka mallipona, but our Honeybees, apis mellifera, were not here until brought from England and Continental Europe.

I'll bet "Englishman's fly" and/or "whiteman's fly" are poor translations of what someone thought Native Americans said, if they ever said anything relating to honeybees. 

I just got a Swiss knife sharpener. It has 5 different languages on the back describing how to use it. Obviously the English description was not written by an English speaker and poorly translated too. Alot is "Lost In Translation".

"Whitemans fly" is a shorthand version of a poor translation of a conversation between two Virginia Native Americans of the MattaPoNi Tribes which went something like this. "Man, did I ever get stung today. The bees were hanging on a branch. I've never seen that sort of thing before." "Yeah, those were probably some of those bees that those men down at Jamestown brought w/ them from England." "Do you mean those white men? Those are the white mans' bees? Great."


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## Barry

Let's not forget this find in the discussion:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/10/061025184944.htm


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## WLC

Uh, Barry...

That's from Myanmar 100 million years ago.

That would make them 'dinosaur flys'.


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## byron

waynesgarden said:


> While many of your links aren't working, you seem to enjoy citing Wikipedia as an authority....
> 
> Real science may eventually bring to light new facts, just as the pre-Clovis discoveries are, but until then, the vested interest that some have in promoting unproven pre-historic European schemes will have to be seen as capitalizing on the merest of speculation.


Actually, I have a collection of hundreds of books I've collected and read over the decades. I don't have my notes typed up on a computer, or really organized in any respectable manner. I'm not entering a debate, I was responding to what I assumed to be a sincere interest in the topic from you. Various websites of authors, as well as Wiki, PBS/Nova, Discover Channel, even YouTube videos are more than sufficient to introduce a tip of the iceberg of evidence and material to a neophyte. I assume anyone truly interested can and will do their own further research.

I can't blame you for your attitude, though. For one thing, it's proper to suspect everything, as well as peoples' motives. 
We all have our own methods of determining what passes through our mental filters and is accepted as truth. Some things suit our interests. Some things were told us by our favorite grandma years ago. Some require actual evidence. 

If my ex-girlfriend tells you what a bad guy I was, you can suspect her veracity. If you, over a long period of time, meet dozens of people, unknown to each other, who have personally known me and say the same thing, you can start to believe it. 

It's simple for you to pick one example out of a handful, and Google up something to oppose it, criticize my link (while not providing one of your own? hmm) but your debate isn't with me, I'm just open minded enough to have weighed and considered the alternative versions to what we all learned in grade school. I think in court you have a "preponderance of the evidence." Every single thing could be plausibly excused away, but to deny an overwhelming pattern of even circumstantial evidence would require a suspension of our critical thinking process to a degree that few of us are willing to go engage in. 

Politics should stay out of science, but people are people. I tend to take points away from any side in a debate that won't allow the other side to be heard. When Indians hire lobbyists to persuade .gov to not let scientists study the DNA of skeletons, and instead want to give the evidence a secret burial, it makes me wonder. When I see this happen repeatedly over the years, I really wonder. 

When I see anthropologists refused grants because they want to investigate something that would disprove the theories of several academicians on the board that is refusing the grant, I wonder....

See how that works? We won't allow anyone who cares about their professional reputation (or tenure) to study something....instead we leave it to the amateurs, and when the evidence starts to pile up, we can sit back and scoff at their lack of credentials. Very effective. Even Watson and Crick, the discoverers of DNA, have their careers ruined when they say politically incorrect things about the heritability of intelligence and the reasons for poor performance in the black community. If the most intelligent people on the planet, preeminent in the field they are commenting on, can have their careers ended, speaking engagements cancelled, etc., what hope does a regular anthropologist or professor have of bucking currently fashionable thought?

Scientists are bought off, intimidated and swayed by peer pressure just like the rest of us, unfortunately.


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## byron

Mtn. Bee said:


> I had been telling folks that they were not here until brought over the big water.


You can keep telling folks that. A single fossil from 14 million years ago is interesting, but I guess it depends on what you mean by "from here." I believe the oldest known fossil of a honeybee was found in Europe, but scientists believe that it originated in either Asia or Africa, depending on whom you listen to. Besides, what context is the conversation in? If someone is telling you that honey bees were here when humans came to North America, they'd be wrong. We all know that monkeys aren't from Wyoming, and yet we find fossils there from millions of years ago. And even finding fossils doesn't tell us how something got there, just that at least one of them _was_ there at some point in time.

Tricky word, _indigenous_. Where is anything from? If you believe in evolution, aren't we all from Africa or Asia? Actually, if you want to go back farther, we are descended from Big Bang star dust, so we are all aliens from outer space, and none of us has a moral claim or "right" to anything that can't be clawed away from someone else and properly defended.


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## Ted Kretschmann

While there is no record that the Vikings brought bees with them. Because of the culture and their favorite drink--Mead, you can make a linear connection. The spanish friars of the Old Southwest USA brought honeybees with them to their missions. That was a good 80 years before Jamestown. There were the Henry Sinclair Incursions also up and down the east coast in the Name of Exploration. How long have honey bees been in North America-no one can really say. I would ask the fellow who's great granddaddy 30 generations back was using eocene horses to tote log hives of giant honeybees, maybe he will know. Mankind has always had a sweet tooth. Whether early man used melaponida or Apis, that craving has and is being filled. TED


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## waynesgarden

The simple fact of the matter is that it was stated that "all of the oldest skeletal remains found in North America are Caucasian and predate the earliest known Indians by thousands of years." That is not just a simple little thing, It is a hugely important matter to science and history. However, all accepted evidence points otherwise, even that of the Kennewick Man, which was not quickly buried but resides in the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture and has been studied by teams of forensic anthropologists that disagree with the Caucasoid misidentification. (I believe that it was identified as Caucasoid by a local archaelogist working for the local coronor.)

What I can not understand from all this is the burning desire of some, even with the total lack of any concrete evidence staring them in the face, will grasp at the weakest hypothesis of a few to fulfill their need to convince themselves that Caucasians were the "first peoples." I can understand the American Nazis pushing these unproven and unaccepted hypothesis as fact on their website, but what of the other, seemingly normal, people that share the same burning desire, that believe without proof, that want it to be true so badly that they state their hope here that someday the proof can be found?

That's the part that I don't get, the need to rewrite history, not based on evidence, but on personal desires for a different outcome than what scientific evidence points to.

When the evidence points to a different scenario than the one archelogists currenty deem most likely, I'll be the first to accept it. I will be the last to accept an alternative scenario because some anonymous member of a bee newsgroup states a totally unproven hypothesis as fact.

Now the Vikings bringing Mead and/or their bees to make it, there's a scenario I can raise a glass to.

Wayne


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## hpm08161947

waynesgarden said:


> Now the Vikings bringing Mead and/or their bees to make it, there's a scenario I can raise a glass to.
> 
> Wayne


Now that part makes sense to me too. I can not imagine a Viking being without his mead (at least not the ones I know ), so surely they brought their bees with them.


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## WLC

Wayne:

Caucasians are a rather large group of peoples that inhabited europe, the mediterranean, and the mideast into india. I wouldn't call them 'white' offhand.

I wouldn't fret too much about it either. It's sort of like the Neanderthal being displaced by **** sapiens argument vs the interbreeding hypothesis.

It's not going to get solved here either.

But, I think that we can all agree that saying that native americans had no other word for the honeybee besides 'white man's fly' doesn't really hold alot of water. It's more anecdote than fact.


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## waynesgarden

I've been thinking, along those same lines, that the idea the there were no honeybees before the Europeans seems pretty much anecdotal also. We have ship's manifests from the 1620's that indicate colonies were imported to the US but is there physical, archaeological evidence describing the state of beekeeping or honey gathering in those early days and which. somehow, demonstrates that beekeeping (or honey gathering) began in that precise period and did not exist previously? 

Wayne


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## WLC

The Americas are really big. How do we know that honeybees didn't make it to the Americas from Africa? Ships can carry all kinds of cargo from other ports (besides europe) to other ports (besides the continental US). I won't mention bees stowing away, but you get the idea.

'Bees In America' is a good book for its kind. However, I wouldn't call it definitive.


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## byron

waynesgarden said:


> That's the part that I don't get, the need to rewrite history, not based on evidence, but on personal desires for a different outcome than what scientific evidence points to.


Welcome to science, even gravity is only a theory. There is only one need to rewrite history or science, and that is when the facts are proven to be other than what was previously believed. At this point the struggle isn't to attempt rewriting anything, but to simply be allowed to do the research. A friend of mine got his Masters in history by writing about the Kennewick man as his thesis. He could and would gladly set you straight on a lot of your "facts" on that topic (by the way, can we expect any links of your own?). But that's not for this message board, and you'd probably not accept any of it, anyway. 

Nobody has really presented any evidence, per se, here anyway. I've provided a few links for anyone interested. If you had the time to read a wide range of books, it would be very difficult for you to come to any other logical conclusion but that old world folks were coming to the new world for much, much longer, and from different places, than it is currently popular to believe. 

An open mind is a terrible thing to waste.


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## byron

WLC said:


> Ships can carry all kinds of cargo from other ports (besides europe) to other ports (besides the continental US). I won't mention bees stowing away, but you get the idea.


Sure, not to mention that a big tree full of bees could have been swept out to sea in a storm. I've read every book Thor Heyerdahl wrote, and I wish he had written more, and I recall that he found that the Canary Current could take even a raft across the Atlantic in a matter of weeks. I guess a huge tree floating might have been able to transport bees. The question is, did it happen? I wish I could go back to the first Indians that traveled to their new home here in the new world and taught them their ABC's. Maybe I could have convinced them that it would really come in handy one day in the future when we'd all like to know more about what happened back then. But without any written history from them, we have to rely on scientists and evidence, and they say nope to pre-Euro honey bees in North America. 

I'll be the first to say the Indians had honey bees when evidence proves, or even suggests it, but that ain't today. Probably won't be tomorrow, either.


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## sqkcrk

waynesgarden said:


> We have ship's manifests from the 1620's that indicate colonies were imported to the US but is there physical, archaeological evidence describing the state of beekeeping or honey gathering in those early days and which. somehow, demonstrates that beekeeping (or honey gathering) began in that precise period and did not exist previously?
> 
> Wayne


When colonies of bees were brought to THE COLONIES, not the US, just to be picky, to the best of my knowledge there was no documentation of honey gathering before Colonists brought their colonies. As there was regarding maple syrup production.

It is hard to prove a negative, except by circumstantial evidence or lack there of drawing one to an assumption.

If it weren't for Wills and Documentation of Estates of individuals, along w/ the Gross Colonial Product Report from the Governor of VA sometime in the early 1700s, I forget when exactly, reporting Beeswax as a product of the Colony worthy of reporting, one may have thought that honey was not produced or used, because one will never find it in any cook book printed and published at that time.

I have seen reports from 1600s Jamestown, VA, which noted a number of skeps or hives behind someones house. Though I can't site the source. Unless someone can show me definitively that apis mellifera were present here on this continent before Europeans arrived here as Colonists, I will firmly hold to the belief that there were no apis mellifera present before so.

As abundant as honeybees are now in nature and having seen how they expand their territory as quickly as they do, in the case of AHB for example, it doesn't make sense to me that if apis mellifera were already here, Colonists would not have noticed their presence and decided that importation wasn't necassary. Which I guess is a tangential topic at best.


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## sqkcrk

byron said:


> I guess a huge tree floating might have been able to transport bees. The question is, did it happen?
> [/Qoute/]
> 
> Attempts to colonize an area w/ only one new group of invaders does not make much of an impact and expecially not a sustaining impact. So, even if that did happen, it wouldn't last. Most likely.


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## WLC

Actually, I was thinking that the Spanish or Portuguese could have bought honeybees to the americas shortly after 1492.

I don't know if they would have been in south or central america, or the carribean.

Would european honeybees spread as quickly as AFB? I don't know.

The whole point being, that native americans would have been familiar with honeybees before the 18th century.


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## Marty Daly

Just a random thought...
If I were going to make the voyage to the "New World," I would not make it twice. Once to see if there were bees and a second time to bring them. If I were a European beekeeper, I would want to bring my bees with me whether they were already there or not.

I am not educated in this area in any way so my input is just a reflection as I've been following this thread.

--- marty ---


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## WLC

My thoughts are similar.

If I was a european wanting to colonize the americas, I'd want a source of sweetener, as well as candle wax.

Did they have another source of wax for candles besides Honeybees?


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## sqkcrk

What we imagine we would do and what was done are two different things. In most cases, no one came here as a Colonist, not to the Virginia Company anyway, and went back to England. Sailors sailed back and forth taking correspondence w/ them.
Letters which suggested certain items be sent w/ the next ships.

Setting aside romantic visions of Religious Freedom, the Colonys were business ventures. So I can well imagine someone noting the lack of honeybees and the abundance of bee forage and the mild climate of Virginia, communicating that having bees here would be a good idea. There were lots and lots of other plants and animals in the manifests of ships sailing to the Colonys. Including rabbits, which were already here, aka coneys.

Most of the earliest of the colonizers were of the Gentleman class and probably not beekeepers or carpenters even. They weren't tradesmen. Many were soldiers and people of rank.


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## WLC

We seem to be focusing on the colonies in the eastern US.

I would wonder if the author of Bees in America did a comprehensive search of Spanish, Portuguese, and even Dutch records?

I could see why an author might be forced to narrow their search because of the number of possible different nationalities and languages involved.


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## Ted Kretschmann

Byron, I would refrain from call George Gist a "half bred". I and probably many more on this site have anscestors on the Cherokee rolls. Am I a "Bred" no, mixed Cherokee yes. Though I consider myself white, because of the blood quantum, Uncle Sam considers me "Indian". The Cherokee nation has for hundred of years intermarried with white people of Scottish, Irish and Germans. They were the traders that settled in among the people. So I am sure there were Cherokee beekeepers back then. Sincerely Ted Kretschmann-Go figure, a german name.


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## byron

WLC said:


> Did they have another source of wax for candles besides Honeybees?


I don't know about other sources of wax (besides bees) , but sure, they made candles before that with everything from beef tallow to whale fat. Smelled like crap and gave off black smoke, while bees wax candles burned more purely and without the stench, although bee wax is harder to mold than animal fat. 

Benjamin Franklin was raised in a candle making family, I believe...


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## sqkcrk

WLC said:


> Did they have another source of wax for candles besides Honeybees?


Sources of wax and oils for lighting were, in the 17th and 18th century, beeswax, tallow and whale oil. Tallow being primarely fat from sheep and beef cattle. Whale oil from Sperm Whales, primarily. Makes a really white wax. Doesn't smell as nice as beeswax.

So, sure, if this is where you are going, bringing along a known source of basic needed materials, beeswax from bee hives, makes sense. Even if there were beeswax producing bees here already.


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## valleyman

Ted Kretschmann said:


> Byron, I would refrain from call George Gist a "half bred". I and probably many more on this site have anscestors on the Cherokee rolls. Am I a "Bred" no, mixed Cherokee yes. Though I consider myself white, because of the blood quantum, Uncle Sam considers me "Indian.


TSK,TSK, Ted. I to am 1/8 Indian. While I have never really never thought about it, or tried to use it for any gain, it is one of those things that is. I take no offense of some ones way of putting something that may have been invented 600 years ago. Now if it were put in a derogatory way then that would be differient.


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## Fusion_power

Neanderthals did indeed interbreed with modern humans as proven by dna testing within the last few years that show unique Neanderthal DNA in some groups of humans living in parts of Europe and Asia. The amount of retained DNA is low at about 2 to 4 percent.

DarJones


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## sqkcrk

What about Neanderthals and honeybees? Did they keep them? Have a word for them? Breed w/ them? I mean breed them?  And did they live on this Continent?

When that bee in the rosin got into the rosin, where was that deposit on the globe? Myannmar wasn't where it is now, was it? 100 million years ago none of the Continents were where they are now, were they?


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## byron

sqkcrk said:


> 100 million years ago none of the Continents were where they are now, were they?


Uh-oh, are you saying the New World used to be the Old World? And since Indians say they have been here since the beginning of time, that means they never came here, because they were already here. Even though 100 million years ago the country was at the bottom of an ocean? Maybe the Indians (and the bees) had gills back then?


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## lazy shooter

As a new beek, this has been an informative thread. There's been a lot of history about bees and "breeds." On my father's side of the family, we have intermarried with so many races that we are, to say the least, mutts. Mom's mother was a Comanche indian and her father was the son of Irish immigrants. That is the last of the known blood lines in my family. My origins, or the origins of others, is of no consequence to me.

The engineering side of me is curious about the origin of bees in America. My son, who has a masters degree in entomology tells me bees are native to America, but he sometimes shoots from the hip and makes decisions too quickly. For sure, something was a pollinator in Pre Colonial America. 

As stated above, this is an interesting thread and a nice sidebar to the solid beekeeping information in most threads.

Lazy


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## byron

lazy shooter said:


> For sure, something was a pollinator in Pre Colonial America.


Oh, absolutely. Lots of pollinators exist that don't produce honey. Butterflies, bumblebees, etc...But also, before Europeans came, there weren't anywhere near the number or amount of plants that needed to be pollinated, we brought that, too. Grass and trees and stuff are mostly wind pollinated.


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## sqkcrk

byron said:


> Even though 100 million years ago the country was at the bottom of an ocean? Maybe the Indians (and the bees) had gills back then?


Continental Drift. Plate tectonics. When did Pangia spread apart?


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## Ted Kretschmann

Mark, since I have a geology education, I will answer those questions later this evening. Right now i gotta go. The harvest awaits no man. TED


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## hpm08161947

I believe Pangaea started to separate about 175 million years ago, but seemed to remember the process took about 35 million or more years to complete. Then again, my memory is not too good these days.


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## sqkcrk

How can anyone expect you to remember back that far in the past? I knew you were older than me, but not that much older.


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## hpm08161947

sqkcrk said:


> How can anyone expect you to remember back that far in the past?


Yea.. those Jurassic days were the Good Ole Days, when a dollar was a dollar and a Man was aaah... maybe a squid??


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## Gibbus

Oh, you're not giving yourself (and the rest of us) enough credit - you (and we) were at least a small ground rodent by then


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## hpm08161947

Gibbus said:


> you (and we) were at least a small ground rodent by then


Don't know... you never met some of my inlaws.... pretty sure they were squids


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## Gibbus

Mine too!
Oh snap - I think we may be related


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## Gibbus

And - to stick in my 2 cents on the original posting: With 10-20 thousand years (maybe more, it appears) of human history in the Americas, I would think there would be some reference to the honeybee before five hundred years ago if they had been here. The Myans kept bees of course (meliponines), but not those that we gather to discuss here. There are drawings and evidence of Pleistocene horses which were gone thousands of years before Columbus arrived, but nothing of bees. A lack of evidence is not proof of lack, but it makes one wonder. Also, as resourceful as the Native american were, you would think they would have developed a dependency on bees for wax, honey, and probably would have stumbled onto alcohol, as in the 'Old' World. Especially when they began to form permanent villages (at least in the Ohio valley) over a thousand years ago.


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## byron

waynesgarden said:


> I can understand the American Nazis pushing these unproven and unaccepted hypothesis as fact on their website, but what of the other, seemingly normal, people that share the same burning desire, that believe without proof, that want it to be true so badly that they state their hope here that someday the proof can be found?


Actually, what was stated was the hope that the proof that has already been found would one day be accepted by the general public, instead of the fairy tales currently being told.

But that's what you resort to? Implying that anyone investigating things must be a racist or Nazi? You want to talk about people that "believe without proof"? Those people are religious zealots. 

Christians used to believe that the earth was only 6,000 years old, flat, and at the center of the universe. It was a long hard road, but science has managed to convince most logical folks that the earth is much older, round, and revolves around the sun. Science has called into question most aspects of all religions, especially the creation myths. 

The Indians in America have many interesting religious beliefs also. The tribes who hired lobbyists to block scientific study of the Kennewick Man believe that they have resided in that area since the "beginning of time." They think they were the first and only people ever there. They said that any claims of other people preceding them there would "deny their religion." Mythology, religion, history, and ritual are not separate things for Indians. I get that, but their religion isn't my religion and you can't force me to accept it. 

You behave as though accepting the truth of the original peopling of this continent is somehow tantamount to re-writing the laws of physics or something. The theory that Indians were the first people here is just that, a theory. It is also part of some Indians' religions. 
It's not scientific fact, it's never been proven. They said they'd
always been here, and we accepted it. The Catholic church gave them a big assist by outlawing anyone who claimed that anybody but Columbus (or any non-Catholic) discovered the new world. We then wrote that into our history books. 

Catholics tried to erase all evidence of pre-Christian Whites coming to the new world because they were godless pagans.
But that was long before anthropology, archeology, radio carbon dating, etc...Science has done nothing but continually erode that original belief. The "Indians first" theory doesn't hold up to science, not any more than any other irrational, self-serving, ignorant, fanatical superstitious belief does. Many of us are tired of religious fanatics blocking science and retarding our growth, education and progress. Medicine suffered because the Church didn't allow autopsies for centuries. Astronomy was set back centuries because we weren't allowed to observe that the earth circled the sun. Now we have to bow down to certain Indian religious leaders attempting to force the rest of us to pay lip service to their flawed, debunked religion. 

There are competing migration theories today. How dare you imply that we are racist nazis for accepting evidence of a theory that violates what amounts to an outdated, flat-earth type of religious oral tradition?

You probably agree with Armin Minthorn, an Umatilla tribal religious leader: _“We [Indian medicine men] know what happened 10,000 years ago. . . . It’s a fact to me. . . .” _(As quoted from the TBR May/June 1999 editorial.)

Is that good science?

Bad history will be re-written, no matter how much you call everyone a nazi. As one Stanford scientist put it in 1999: *“We are rewriting the textbooks on the first Americans.”* (Newsweek, April 26, 1999, 57.)

As Dr. David Glenn Smith (genetics researcher, University of 
Claifornia—Davis) has written, "*We have a dozen and a half samples that we call Ancient Ones because they are collectively the oldest samples from Native America. Native Americans have, by orthodoxy, been regarded as Asiatic in origin. Kennewick opens up the opportunity or the likelihood, the possibility, that this was not the entire picture; that there has been at least one additional migration from Europe."*

Physical anthropologist Catherine J. MacMillan, a professor emeritus at Central Washington University, looking at the skull on July 30, 2003, concurred that the skeleton (of Kennewick Man) was Caucasian. 

CAT scans of the pelvis, however, indicated that the projectile
point might be of the Cascade phase, usually dated between circa 7000 and 2500 B.C. _*“I was stunned when I examined the pelvic bone and the projectile point associated with it,” wrote MacMillan in an August 31 letter to the Benton County coroner, “so I decided to reexamine the skull. My opinion remained the same: Caucasian male.”*_

Some tribes like the Paiutes of Nevada actually believe that they were not the first and only race on the North American continent and it was their own genocidal behavior that has resulted in the disappearance of the ancient white population of North America.

Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins was the daughter of a Paiute Indian chief, born “somewhere near 1844” who married a white man and has written her memoirs and published the book: Life Among the Paiutes: Their Wrongs and Claims (1883). On pages 73, 74 and 75 of the original edition she describes her tribe’s struggles “many hundreds of years ago” with a “tribe of barbarians” who used “to kill and eat” her people. She keeps giving us exciting details about the numbers (2,600) of these people (the Paiutes called them Sai-i) *who had reddish or blond hair and were a different race, spoke a different language and were engaged in a prolonged battle with her tribe.* As the final climax of the confrontation the strangers were cornered in a cave above Humboldt Lake (“on the east side of the lake”) and burned in that cave by the Indians.

But even these tribes who admit that they weren't the first or only folks here don't want these old mummies and skeletons to be studied (Spirit Cave Mummies, Wizard's Beach Man, etc., etc., etc.). 
Maybe there are some religious oral traditions that Indians don't want proved, huh?

So we have Indians whose religion tells them that God/Creator
created them here and gave this land to them. The Whites come along with their religion of Manifest Destiny, which says God/Creator led them here and gave this land to them. Many people over the centuries have not appreciated Christian religions being forced on them, and I don't appreciate Indian religious beliefs being imposed on my history books or science.

But to stay on topic, I really like my bees.


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## WLC

Let me see who kept bees in the Americas.

The Mayans kept stingless bees:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/06/050615062105.htm

Cortes knew about the stingless bee:

http://sites.maxwell.syr.edu/CLAG/Yearbook1987/dixon.pdf


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## Ted Kretschmann

There is evidence that man has been in the America's 100,000 years. This evidence is charcoal from hearths excavated in caves in South America. Done by carbon dating. Something else to think about. Certain American Indian tribes have a DNA marker called the X genetic marker. This marker is very, very old. It originates in Europe, in the Basque region just before and during the ice age. Clovis technology can also be found in the caves in the form of points and scrapers in the same area of Europe. During the last ice age, a person could literally walk from Europe to America. Continental shelves were exposed and forested. The outer banks was dry forested land. Sure some ice would have had to have been crossed. But there would have been gaps in it. So with that in mind, it might have been possible that honeybees might have also made the migrations. TED


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## byron

WLC said:


> Let me see who kept bees in the Americas.
> 
> The Mayans kept stingless bees:


Different continent than the one being discussed, but yeah, of course.
The meliponine bee is the only honey bee native to the Western Hemisphere. The Mayans were in the same area. Those bees can't survive in cooler weather, so they never were able to spread out any farther north. Now the AHB will probably be the end of the stingless bees. 

I guess we'd have to start a different thread to discuss all the documented similarities between ancient Egypt and the Mayan civilization, including, but not limited to, pyramids with burial chambers, mummification, reed boats, hieroglyphs, sun worship, a form of brain surgery, as well as keeping bees in cylindrical hives placed horizontally. Honey was also used in the mummification process. 

I think everyone is also aware that the mummies of ancient pharaohs contained tobacco and cocoa from Central/South America, and cloth from mummies in Peru contained cotton whose DNA was traced back to Egypt.


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## WLC

What's important to note is that the spanish would bring their own bees to New Spain.

I would hypothesis that it becomes a question of which bees the native americans saw first. Was it the 'English Fly" or was it the 'Spanish Fly'?

I tend to think that bees that the spaniards brought with them to New Spain would have spread northwards before the bees that the other europeans brought were even hived. But, that's just a conjecture.


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## waynesgarden

It's not lobbying that prevents your ideas from being uncritically accepted, it is the lack of acceptable evidence that has been presented to the archelolgical world. That there are some with competing views doesn not make those views fact. (Yet.)

You can make claims that the hypothesis you wish to be true actually is true until the cows come home (and I have no doubt you will) but without the acceptable proof, I believe that the statement you made, contrary to generally accepted evidence, is inaccurate. 

You might also look at the more recent examination of the Kennewick Man, performed by Dr. Hugh Berryman, forensic anthropologist at Middle Tennessee State University. While his findings do support your claims that he may be unrelated to Native Americans. his conclusion is that the remains are Asian. Kennewick aside, there are other, decidedly Asian,
remains discovered recently, much older than the youthful 9,300 year-old Kennewick Man.

You are imagining the so-called "implication." You are imagining I lumped you or anyone else in a despicable hate group. You undoubtably have not carefully read the question I posed, which is why is there this great need to have an unproven and unaccepted hypothesis accepted as fact? That I mentioned an unsavory group that also promotes this unproven fact seems to have touched a nerve. I apologize if your less-than-careful reading made you think I was including you in that group. I do not know you nor your attitudes. (Nor do I care.)

I'll check back on this thread in the future, should I read of credible discoveries that support your hypothesis and be the first to congratulate you on being correct. Until then, carry on and best of luck in presenting unproven wishes as factual science. The beauty of the internet is that we all can live in the reality of our own choosing.

Thankfully, the mystery of the bees has yet to be decided. 

Regards. Over and out.

Wayne


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## byron

waynesgarden said:


> It's not lobbying that prevents your ideas from being uncritically accepted, it is the lack of acceptable evidence that has been presented to the archelolgical world.


With all due respect, you may want to read my post more carefully. No ideas should be "uncritically accepted" and I never said that lobbying prevented it. I said that certain Indian groups hired lobbyists to persuade .gov to not conduct studies on old skeletons and mummies and instead to allow said Indians to bury the evidence before being examined. And I said that because that's what happened. Is this another fact you are disputing? Shall I spend the time to look up the name of the lobbyists that were hired? 



waynesgarden said:


> ...lack of acceptable evidence that has been presented to the archelolgical world.


Again, with all due respect to someone who apparently can't even spell _archeological_, that's a silly statement. No "acceptable evidence that has been presented?" Do you read the journals in that field? You could just watch NOVA or Discover and see plenty of accredited scientists in the field advancing plausible theories and presenting the same evidence that I refer to. You might say it hasn't been proven to the satisfaction of the majority of humanity, sure, but to say that there hasn't even been any acceptable evidence presented is just absurd. Maybe you are a careless typist and meant to say something completely different. You must have been doing hive checks all day in the hot sun or something.


----------



## byron

WLC said:


> What's important to note is that the spanish would bring their own bees to New Spain.


Linky linky, we want linky. I'm not saying Spaniards didn't bring bees, I'm saying that I'm here to learn, and I want to know who brought them, when and where.


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## WLC

Having taken Anthro (over 30 years ago), I think that's there's enough evidence to form alternative theories regarding **** sapiens in the Americas.

The Clovis technoogy alone was enough for me.


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## WLC

Byron:

The best link that I could find was to (probably hard to get references) some studies on beekeeping in New Spain/Mexico. It's the second link in post #70 in this thread.

I would speculate that european honeybees brought to Mexico in the 17th century would easily out reproduce and spread farther than bees brought to New England around the same time.

What I've noticed about Tammy Horn's, 'Bees in America' is this:

She not only marginalizes the native americans to calling bees, 'white man's fly' (this includes native americans in Mexico), she also completely ignores one of the first great european powers in the americas, the Spanish.

I can't explain it. Can you?

This map might help clarify the issue:

http://cdn.dipity.com/uploads/events/7867e2d2c65e9fe788e47998ac9af613_1M.png


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## waynesgarden

byron said:


> ....to someone who apparently can't even spell _archeological_....


Well, with that deep and analytical argument, I'm certain that the scientific community will now embrace your declaration that "all of the oldest skeletal remains found in North America are Caucasian and predate the earliest known Indians by thousands of years." Yes, _all _ of them. Each and every one. I'm sure we will see the textbooks being reprinted immediately, given such a compelling argument.

Still, Kennewick Man happily resides in the Burke Museum in Washington, apparently able to resist the mean old lobbyists that tried to bury him. I only mention that to tie up the one loose end. Other than that, you've settled the burning question once and for all. 

You're a winner.

Now, back to bees.

Wayne


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## Barry Digman

Leave the personal sniping out. Thanks.


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## byron

waynesgarden said:


> I'm certain that the scientific community will now embrace your declaration that "all of the oldest skeletal remains found in North America are Caucasian and predate the earliest known Indians by thousands of years."


I suppose the most you could do is maybe split hairs over the exact differences between the words "Caucasian," "Caucasoid," and "proto-Caucasoid," and of course the easy out when in doubt is to just say things look "like the Ainu" since that is still technically Asia. Who the original Ainu were and what part of Europe they originated in is completely different, but interested folks can look that up.


I'll repeat the scientists from the University of California:
*Though many tribes believe their history goes further back, scientists can only confidently trace the ancestry of Native Americans to about 7,000 years ago.*

Here is a quick quote from a news story:
_"The oldest skull up to now, believed to be that of "Buhl Woman," was found in 1989 at a gravel quarry in Idaho. Scientists said it dates back 10,500 to 11,000 years. *But researchers scarcely studied those bones before the Shoshone-Bannock tribe claimed and reburied them.*"_

Maybe if the Indians would allow research, we might find skeletal remains from them that are older than the Caucasoid remains.

But until then, I stand by what the professionals say, and that is, again:
*Though many tribes believe their history goes further back, scientists can only confidently trace the ancestry of Native Americans to about 7,000 years ago.*

So all of those other ones, Kennewick Man, Spirit Cave Mummies, Wizard's Beach Man, and on and on, they are all older than the oldest confirmed Indian skeletal remains. Now, you can say all the others are Caucasoid, Caucasian, or Martians, but they aren't Indian. 

Your argument isn't with me, it's with the evidence that you say has yet to even be presented to the scientific community.

Hey, this is cool:
You may have seen the BBC Science program "Ice Age Columbus." I think you can watch it on YouTube, but I just read the transcripts again. 

Here is a link to them, and a few excerpts:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2002/columbustrans.shtml

NARRATOR (JACK FORTUNE): This is the story of one of the greatest voyages in human history. It was a journey which took people across thousands of miles of snow and ice through some of the most extreme weather ever seen on Earth, but these were not famous polar explorers like Scott or Shackleton and they weren't adventurers in search of conquest. These were men, women and children travelling across oceans and ice floes in search of a better life and this is more than just an epic journey. *It is threatening to rewrite one of the greatest stories of them all. For these people were travelling across the Atlantic from Europe to America and they would get there 17,000 years before Columbus,* in the Stone Age. Last year *archaeologist Bruce Bradley* went on a mission to France to challenge one of the most widely accepted theories of early human history and here, in the back room of this small museum, he found exactly the evidence he was looking for because amid the arrowheads and needles he found something which by rights should not have been here at all, some distinctive two-sided spearheads that are at least 17,000 years old.


DR BRUCE BRADLEY (*Smithsonian Institution*): When I first saw this material when it was first brought out I was astounded, I was shocked, I was absolutely flabbergasted. Here is what we needed.

JIM ADOVASIO: The majority of the archaeological community was acutely sceptical and they* invented all kinds of reasons why these dates couldn't possibly be right.* People have invested in the Clovis first position for more than 70 years. For a lot of people they think that this is not only a repudiation of a well accepted dogma, it's a repudiation of themselves.

MICHAEL COLLINS: The best way in the world to get beaten up professionally is to claim you have a pre-Clovis site.

DENNIS STANFORD: When you dig deeper than Clovis a lot of people *do not report it* because they're worried about the reaction of their colleagues.


DR DOUGLAS WALLACE (Emory University): We can get insight into our history by looking at modern DNA samples. If and when we need a sample from a population in Africa or a population in Asia we can then go to that tube, pull that tube out, resurrect those cells, amplify them, isolate their DNA and ask yet a new question.

NARRATOR: Wallace was particularly interested in a type of DNA called mitochondrial DNA.

When he worked out the dates he realised there were several waves of migration and the earliest group had come over nearly 10,000 years before the Clovis, some 20,000 years ago. Immediately Wallace thought he had to be wrong. He repeated his work.* So did other labs. The results were absolutely clear.*

NARRATOR: Whoever had made the Clovis Point had used a technique quite different to that used in Asia, so where had they come from and then he remembered a textbook he had seen when he was a student. It showed pictures of ancient spearheads made 20,000 years ago, long before Clovis, by a people called the Solutreans, but their points looked very like Clovis Points. *The trouble was that the Solutreans came from France.*

BRUCE BRADLEY: Even then I was thinking this can't be right, something's going on.

NARRATOR: Nevertheless, the idea began to form in his mind. No matter what the textbooks might say, *perhaps some of the earliest Americans were not Asian, but European.*

BRUCE BRADLEY: *It was sacrilege to even mention* the possibility, you know, it, it certainly wasn't part of the scientific process at that point in time. There was no possibility, forget it, don't even think about it.

NARRATOR: The heresy was that it was a challenge to the identity of Native Americans. They believed they were an Asian people with no European blood at all. It had long been a crucial part of their culture.

DR JOALLYN ARCHAMBAULT (American Indian Programme, Smithsonian Institution): Some Indian people will undoubtedly find it upsetting. The thought that some of our ancestors might come from Europe, the very peoples who conquered us and took away our land and colonised us, will not be a comfortable thought with many Indian people and I really can't blame them.

NARRATOR: Despite the controversy Bradley was stirring up, he decided to pursue his idea. He went to south-western France where the Solutreans had lived 17,000 years earlier. In his mind was one simple question: could they possibly have been amongst the first Americans? In France one thing became abundantly clear. *The Solutreans were a remarkable people.*

BRUCE BRADLEY: Of all the Stone Age cultures that we've studied, the Solutrean people continually come out as being the most innovative,* the most adaptive and probably the most inventive.* We have evidence that they invented the heat treatment of flint to make it better to flake. I mean they invented all kinds of things like the eyed needle and the, the list goes on and on and on.

------------------------------------------------

Maybe if science would quit being blocked by religious fanatics in the Indian community too invested in their own fantasies, we could get to the bottom of who brought the first honey bees here.


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## byron

waynesgarden said:


> ...the Kennewick Man, which was not quickly buried but resides in the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture and has been studied by teams of forensic anthropologists that disagree with the Caucasoid misidentification. (I believe that it was identified as Caucasoid by a local archaelogist working for the local coronor.)


And there also continue to be plenty of anthropologists and archeologists that confirm the Caucasoid identification. 

You do understand, don't you, exactly *why* Kennewick Man is in that museum? It's because several courts, after hearing acceptable evidence from scores of eminently qualified scientists, agreed that there was no way any link could be made between Kennewick Man and any Indian tribe.

Maybe this will help ya:


*On February 4, 2004, it was reported by the Associated Press that "[t]he 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco upheld a decision last August by U.S. Magistrate Judge John Jelderks in Portland that the remains can be studied. ...

"The three-judge panel found that the remains do not fall under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act and can be studied under the Archaeological Resources Protection Act.

"The ruling said the remains date to a time before any recorded history and that that makes it impossible to establish any relationship with existing Indians."*

So my earlier point remains valid. Even though religious fanatics in the Indian community failed in Kennewick's case, they tried to stop science from exposing their fraud of being the original people here. They have in fact hired lobbyists to prevent many other pieces of evidence from being examined. The way it currently exists, if scientists can date a skeleton or artifact to being old enough, they can keep it because it is considered too old to be Indian and therefore falls under the Archaeological Resources Protection Act.

In other cases, examples of which are in this thread, if Indians 
rush to claim anything found before it can be dated, they get to bury the evidence. How despicable and shameful, to thwart good science all in the name of perpetuating a hoax. 





waynesgarden said:


> It's not lobbying that prevents your ideas from being uncritically accepted, it is the lack of acceptable evidence that has been presented to the archelolgical [sic] world.


Are you still claiming that "no acceptable evidence has been presented to the archelolgical [sic] world" even after all of the, 
um, archeologists that have been cited just in this thread as having presented evidence? How about the fact that the courts have judged, according to science, that anything even as recent as 10,000 years ago is still deemed too old to be connected to Indians?

Do you have any actual evidence or factual research on your side, or just more primitive superstitious Indian witch doctors who say they don't need archeologists since they can just dream walk back in time to see what happened?

Ask them if they see any honey bees back then. Actually, when that 14 million year old bee fossil was found in Nevada, I guess we are all lucky the local tribe of horse thieves didn't try to claim it as an ancestor or something and give it a "sacred" burial before it could be examined.


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## waynesgarden

byron said:


> snipped


You'r beating a dead horse. I told you, you're the winner. So if any scientists are disputing your findings, your argument is with them.

I note your reference to a 4 million year old honeybee fossil. The only North American one of any note that I'm familiar with is the 14 million year old one found in Nevada. But what do I know, you probably know of a much more recent find than me. 

There's nothing in the study of the 14 million year old bee about any attempts by any Native American group (witch doctors or horse thieves, as you describe them) to claim it. 

Wayne


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## byron

waynesgarden said:


> I told you, you're the winner.


 Thank you. By the way, I doubt you'll find anything scientists won't vehemently disagree about, from quarks to global warming to the heritability of intelligence. 

I found this interesting:

*Proto-Caucasoid Life in North America*

Both the nature and the antiquity of the *earliest* archeological finds prove that the Paleoamericans *were not Amerinds (Proto-**********)*. Consider: The Fork Rock Cave in Oregon has been in the middle of ongoing new discoveries. The cave itself is small -- only thirty-five feet wide and sixty-five feet long. It was here in 1938 that about seventy pairs of sandals made of sagebrush were discovered by Luther S. Cressman.9 Radio-carbon dating technology dated the sandals at nine thousand years old (fortunately, the sandals were preserved until radio-carbon dating was invented). Charcoal was also found with a radio-carbon date indicating it was thirteen thousand two-hundred years old.10 The sagebrush sandals were intricately woven, and the other items found in the cave included projectile points, scrapers, drills, a wooden trigger for a trap, small pieces of basketry and awls to make leather (or tailored clothing for kinfolk of the Kennewick man), all of which indicated skilled workers. * These differ vastly from Indian artifacts both in ancient North America and in modern Indian findings.*

Douglas Owsley, *Division Head of Physical Anthropology at the National Museum of Natural History (Smithsonian Institution)* in Washington D.C., has examined all of the seven well-preserved skeletons found in North America and found that they all have *Proto-Caucasoid *features in common. These seven different skeletons were found at seven different sites and from different, though quite remote, periods of time. The Kennewick man, one of the seven, has a spearhead of the "Cascade" type in his hip. All of these remains came from the period near the end of the later glacial era, during which the Clovis people disappeared - a fact which strengthens the argument that the deceased were* more closely related to the Clovis people than to Amerinds.*

-------------------------------------------

As long as we know that Old World folks kept bees, at least starting 10,000 years ago when we domesticated other animals (and plants) we have to at least entertain the possibility that they _could have_ (but most likely did not) brought bees with them here from Europe, since we now know that Europeans have been coming to the new world much longer even than that, and before anyone else, as even that "waynesgarden" now admits.


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## sqkcrk

Humans have been keeping bees that long? Is that evidenced in the digs in Isreal or somewhere most recently in the news?


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## byron

sqkcrk said:


> Humans have been keeping bees that long?


I could see it. 10k years ago we domesticated other animals, and since people had been robbing honey bees for a long time before that, it wouldn't be hard to imagine a clever fellow who carried a branch full of bees home and learned how to take their honey without killing the bees. That seems much easier than taming wolves and turning them into poodles. 

We've all seen that 8,000 year old cave painting in Spain, although it's hard to tell if he's taking honey from kept bees, or just robbing wild bees.











As far as records go, this is the oldest stuff I could find:

1) Although bees had been raised in Egypt from as early as the Old Kingdom (Kuény 1950), there is no evidence for this practice in ancient Palestine until the Hellenistic period (Neufeld 1978, which discusses earlier literature). *Despite this lack of evidence, they may well have been raised. *The one thing we know for sure is that the honey of wild bees was collected (cf. 1 Sam 14:25–28). The richest source of wild honey was the forest, but it could also be gathered from hives in the cliffs (Deut 32:13; Ps 81:17). The yield from honey hunting is surprisingly large. A single hive may produce as much as 50 kg (110 lb) of honey. Honey eaten in the comb may offer certain side benefits. It is not uncommon for the larvae to be eaten with the comb (cf. R. Bailey 1989: 685), and larvae are an excellent source of protein.

2) In Mesopotamia, the first evidence for beekeeping comes from the stele of Shamash-resh-usur (early 8th century B.C.E.), who boasts that he had “brought down from the mountain of Habha people, the flies which collect honey, which none of my predecessors had ever known or brought down … and located them in the gardens of the town GN. (There) they might now collect honey and wax. I (even) knew how to separate honey (from) wax by boiling (the comb) and (my) gardeners know it too” (Weissbach 1903: 11 col. iv.13–16; v.1–6). In view of the absence of any mention of honey hunting or beekeeping in texts prior to this time, Shamash-resh-usur´s claim is credible.”

Another interesting - and earlier - text in relation to ancient beekeeping is a collection of old Hittite laws. Extraction from an article in “Context of Scripture”: “The Hittite laws were first written down in the Old Kingdom (ca. 1650–1500 BCE). They are therefore later than the Sumerian law collections of Ur-Nammu and Lipit-Ishtar and the Akkadian laws of Eshnunna and Hammurabi, but earlier than the Middle Assyrian laws and the laws of the Hebrew Bible.”

And one part of the law-text goes:
“[If] anyone [steals bees] in a swarm, [formerly] they paid [… shekels of silver], but now he shall pay 5 shekels of silver. He shall look to his house for it. [If] anyone steals [2] or 3 beehives, formerly (the offender) would have been exposed to bee-sting. But now he shall pay 6 shekels of silver. If anyone steals a beehive, if there are no bees in the hive, he shall pay 3 shekels of silver.”

3) The oldest pictures of bee-keepers in action are from the Old Kingdom of Ancient Egypt. (About 7th century BC) In Niuserre’s sun temple bee-keepers are blowing smoke into hives as they are removing the honey-combs. After extracting the honey from the combs it was strained and poured into earthen jars which were then sealed. Honey treated in this manner could be kept years.


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## Barry

There has already been one warning about the personal remarks, I'm making a second warning. This thread will close down if it continues.


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## sqkcrk

Seems like at least a 2,000 year leap of faith from Honey Hunting to actual beekeeping. Seems like a lack of documentation, evidence and some sort of proof.

That ancient illustration looks an awful lot like the National Geographic Photographs of Honey Hunters climbing ropes to get to honeycombs hanging on cliffs and not in "managed" hives.


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## WLC

Maybe if someone could dig up this reference, we could get back on track:

Nordenskiold, Erland. 1930. On the history and geographical distribution of beekeeping by American Indians. Comparative Ethnographical Studies 8: 196-210.

I doubt that this manuscript could be found without some real digging:

Brand, Donald D. n.d. The honey bee in New Spain-Mexico. Manuscript, University of Texas, Austin, TX.

I'd like to see what they have to say about native american beekeeping, and the influence of New Spain on beekeeping in the continental U.S. .

Someone studied it. I can't get to the studies from here though. :scratch:


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## hpm08161947

WLC said:


> Maybe if someone could dig up this reference, we could get back on track:
> 
> Nordenskiold, Erland. 1930. On the history and geographical distribution of beekeeping by American Indians. Comparative Ethnographical Studies 8: 196-210.


http://sites.maxwell.syr.edu/clag/Yearbook1987/dixon.htm


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## WLC

Dixon is where I got the reference from.

Maybe Eva Crane's 'The World History Of Beekeeping And Honey Hunting' would be a better bet. If you have a copy.

What's interesting in this 142 page pdf is the illustration of the Maya bee god, Ah Muzencab.

http://www.mayaweb.nl/mayaweb/chilam.pdf

p. 21


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## byron

sqkcrk said:


> Seems like at least a 2,000 year leap of faith from Honey Hunting to actual beekeeping. Seems like a lack of documentation, evidence and some sort of proof.


I could have typed that last paragraph better. We know that other animals were domesticated 10k years ago and that we were coming to America from Europe well before that, I was saying we could entertain the possibility that bees were domesticated and brought here also, but, as I said, I don't think so. If we go strictly by what is documented, which we have to, really, then I have already provided the dates in this thread both when White men brought honey bees to America, and when we got them all the way to the West Coast. 

If you are saying that it's also a leap of faith lacking documentation and proof that Amerinds/********** kept (or even saw) honey bees before we brought them here, then I agree with you. That's kind of the point of the whole thread. If someone could prove that honey bees were here before it is documented that we brought them here, then you'd have to assume that Europeans still brought them here in the last 10,000 years, and that it just wasn't documented. As I've shown, we've been coming here even longer ago than that, but animal domestication is only believed to have been accomplished 10,000 years ago.


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## byron

WLC said:


> What's interesting in this 142 page pdf is the illustration of the Maya bee god, Ah Muzencab.
> 
> http://www.mayaweb.nl/mayaweb/chilam.pdf
> 
> p. 21


Cool, great find, I've been reading that document for about a half hour now....

I also found this, only 5 pages, but it references that Erland Nordenskiold article heavily. 

http://escholarship.org/uc/item/6dq9d0bp;jsessionid=A22F9665198B0D4B63C5EE040C23BA92#page-1

What I found interesting was that according to that article in the _American Anthropologist_ above, it appears that what the majority of the New World/Central American people were doing with those stingless bees wasn't truly domestication. I guess to really domesticate a bee, you need to engage in propagation of new colonies. These guys, even the Mayans, apparently, really just cut a branch full of bees down and brought it home so their neighbors wouldn't steal it. But when the bees died or left, you had to go find a new branch. 

Part of their folklore was that domestic squabbling would make your bees abscond, so that men with 2 or 3 wives were rarely successful at keeping their bees around. 

Just bringing the bees home was about the same as some of those tribes in, I believe, Papua New Guinea when they would dig up roots in the woods, bring them home and re-plant them. Doesn't count as domestication of a plant, because when that plant died, you had to go dig up a new root.


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## WLC

byron:

The Maya (and Aztecs) had bee gods. That goes alot further than just 'keeping stingless bees'.

I would also say that you made a good catch as well.

It was stated that those who found keeping stingless bees in the manner you described (tree hollow sections) too difficult would have much better luck raising european bees!

Heh, heh.

I think that many a native american in mexico during the 17th century might have been very attracted to european style beekeeping.

Just think of how many of the members here on beesource look for a better way to keep bees.

Now, if someone could just find a record of european honeybees making it to the continental U.S. via New Spain before the east coast bees could have done so via northern europe.


----------



## byron

WLC said:


> The Maya (and Aztecs) had bee gods. That goes a lot further than just 'keeping stingless bees'.


Oh, yeah, I got that. I guess I'm not too sure what you mean by "going further." Like, I'm not downplaying their beekeeping, I understand it is/was important to them. If you are referring to their lack of domestication, I think they had jaguar gods as well, but never domesticated the jaguar, to my knowledge. 

I wonder also if the sophistication of their beekeeping wasn't higher among the ancient Mayans that today's residents of the same geographic area. Ancient Egyptians had bee gods as well, but the current population of that area is nowhere near the same genetically or culturally today, and I don't believe they worship bees in the same way or value them to the same degree. 

Ancient Mayans were vastly different, and they may have had a much higher level of beekeeping, as well as everything else, than modern inhabitants of the region. 

When Europeans go hacking through the jungle and find ancient cities, the locals were usually clueless about their (the cities) existence. We also know that the high culture of the Mayans wasn't developed by them, and it wasn't developed in that location. Archeologists can dig down and see that it goes from stone age hunters/gatherers to instant advanced civilization, and after the collapse, everything in the area completely and instantly reverted back to the stone age. 

We know the Incas/Mayans credited the "bearded white gods who came from across the sea from the east" who civilized the natives, stopped their wars, and taught them agriculture and construction. I've referred to the links between the old world and the Mayans earlier in this thread. Could they have brought bees with them, long before the Spanish in later centuries?

And if so, we does anyone know if what the Egyptians had were European honey bees? Cleopatra was from an aristocratic Greek family, etc...And the Greeks invented the TBH and had bee gods as well, so was it European honey bees the Greeks shared with the Egyptians? In which case the Egyptians/Phoenicians that influenced (or created) Mayan civilization may have brought Euro honey bees to Central America, along with beekeeping itself. The Mayans and Egyptians both kept bees in horizontal cylindrical tubes. 

It's the modern people in Central America that just drag a branch home and tie it above their door. The real Mayans had to have been more sophisticated than that.

In that case, I could see Euro honey bees travelling through northern climates to North America easier than those stingless bees that can't really cope with cooler weather.

Can anyone find reports of DNA studies done on honey bees found in Egyptian tombs?


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## WLC

I was hopeful that beekeeping in New Spain could be compared to beekeeping in New England here in the continental U.S. since Tammy Horn's 'Bees in America: How the Honeybee Shaped a Nation' never mentioned the New Spain influence on beekeeping.

Perhaps we'll never know the extent of the Spanish influence on beekeeping here.

However, that being said, I think that it could have easily spread through the southwest well into California and even as far east as Florida.


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## sqkcrk

byron said:


> does anyone know if what the Egyptians had were European honey bees? Cleopatra was from an aristocratic Greek family, etc...And the Greeks invented the TBH and had bee gods as well, so was it European honey bees the Greeks shared with the Egyptians?
> 
> The Mayans and Egyptians both kept bees in horizontal cylindrical tubes.
> 
> Can anyone find reports of DNA studies done on honey bees found in Egyptian tombs?


More questions than answers, it seems.

Why didn't Egyptians use the Greek Technique of keeping bees in baskets w/ sticks on top?

What are the Greek Bee Gods? Gods who kept bees I can imagine. But Bee Gods? All the Gods I recall hearing of in Greek and Roman Mythology were of Human form, not animalistic.

If anyone could find bees in Egyptian tombs, would they be able to extract DNA from them?


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## WLC

The only references I can find for when european honeybees may have reached the new world via New Spain was from Eva Crane's 'The World History of Beekeeping and Honey Hunting'.

'Statements have been made implying that early Franciscan or Jesuit missionaries kept bees in the Sonoran desert spanning the Arizona-Mexican border as early as the 1500s, but I have been unable to locate or identify any original report.'

'As early as 1513, Herrera's 'Obra de Agricultura' mentioned the difficulty of transporting bees to the newly discovered indies.'

'Brand (1970, published 1988) concluded from various sources that the Spanish probably introduced honeybees in the 1520s or 1530s.'

I would say that honeybees could have made their way into the continental U.S. via New Spain at an earlier time than bees introduced in New England.

I would also say that bees introduced into the continental U.S. from New Spain by a 'southern strategy' would have spread more quickly than bees introduced in the east because the warmer climate would have given southern honeybees a decided reproductive advantage over eastern honeybees.

It's not just a matter of 'white man's fly', it's a matter of which white man.


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## byron

sqkcrk said:


> Why didn't Egyptians use the Greek Technique of keeping bees in baskets w/ sticks on top?


 The Egyptian beeks had their bees on rafts going up and down the Nile depending on which flowers were blooming at particular times. You wouldn't want to travel around like that with Greek Top Bar Hives, the comb is too fragile and would always be breaking off. Besides, you can fit more cylindrical tubes of bees on a raft if you stack them up, and it would be more stable on a raft than a pile of baskets. 



sqkcrk said:


> All the Gods I recall hearing of in Greek and Roman Mythology were of Human form, not animalistic.


Remember Dionysos the Bull God?

The tombs at Mycenae were shaped as beehives, as was the omphalos at Delphi in Classical Greece, where Apollo ruled with his chief oracular priestess, the Pythia, who was called the Delphic Bee. 

In the Greek Homeric Hymn to Hermes written down in the eighth century BC, the god Apollo speaks of three female seers as three bees or bee-maidens, who like himself, practiced divination.

The precise identity of the Bee Goddess remains a great mystery. Signs of her worship are evident in the Mediterranean cultures of around 3,000 years ago at the temples of Artemis. She is one of the oldest and most popular aspects of the Divine Feminine. Born on the Greek Island of Delos, Artemis was sister of Apollo and daughter to Zeus and Leto. 

The priestesses of historical descendents of the ancient Bee Goddess -- Demeter, Rhea, Cyble -- were called Melissae, the ancient Latin word for bees.

Melissa, the goddess as Queen Bee, taught mortals how to ferment honey into mead. In the Homeric Hymn to Hermes, the Melissai feed on honey and are inspired "to speak the truth.

And don't forget that last year an ancient Greek grave was found containing a Golden Bee Goddess pendant:
"If you look at it one way up, it's shaped like a lily," said Stampolidis, a professor of archaeology at the University of Crete who has worked at Eleutherna for 25 years. "Turned upside down, you see a *female figure holding her breasts, whose lower body is shaped as a bee with wings*. The workmanship is exquisite."



sqkcrk said:


> If anyone could find bees in Egyptian tombs, would they be able to extract DNA from them?


I can't imagine why not. We have seen them do DNA studies on the mummies themselves, which is how we know that King Tut’s DNA is a 99.6 percent match with Western European Y chromosomes. I wonder if they could do a DNA test on the honey itself, if a bee hasn't been found?


----------



## byron

WLC said:


> I would say that honeybees could have made their way into the continental U.S. via New Spain at an earlier time than bees introduced in New England.


Don't forget that deserts and mountains stopped bees. That's why so much money was offered to anyone who could get a live colony to the west coast. 


WLC said:


> It's not just a matter of 'white man's fly', it's a matter of which white man.


Ha, I don't know how often the Amerinds really distinguished between us by nationality. Like the ones that just called us "hairy mouths" or whatever because we had facial hair and they couldn't grow it. Some of them even just called ******* "black white men." Not all of them, of course. There were hundreds, if not thousands, of different languages being spoken here by the Amerinds. Different groups being contacted by us at different times with different outcomes.....They didn't all have the same experiences.

That's why it's hard to say, "Indians called this such and such." Obviously we don't mean _*all*_ of them. Not all Indians kept black slaves, but some did. When we moved them from Florida to Oklahoma, we told them they could take their property. That was easy, they didn't really own anything that couldn't walk itself or be carried. So the Indians were allowed to take all of their black slaves. 

So yeah, it's been documented that Indians called honey bees "White man flies," but not all of them. Once when I was in Zagreb, a Croatian friend told me how much he hated pigeons that were all over the market place and city square. He said, "We call them rats with wings." I mentioned that later to someone else there, and they looked puzzled and said, "No, we don't call them that." So, is it correct to say that Croatians hate pigeons and call them winged rats?


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## stavros

Please do not confuse latin and greek--the latter were written about 800 years before the former, and greek is a hindo-european language of distinct origin not related to the latin or germanic language trees. "Melissa" is a greek word and means "honey bee". Here are a few other greek words of importance to beekeepers:
"spermathiki" (in greek) means spermatheka, i.e., semen-case, like "bibliothiki" is book-case, "apothiki" is storage-case, "discothiki" is disk-case (discoteque) and "avgothiki" is egg-case, and "thiki" is ... guess what ... case!
"melifera" (in greek) means honey-carrying (meli=honey, fera=carrying), as used in apis-melifera.
"melissokomos" (in greek) means the one who takes care of the honey-bees, and "nosokomos" (in greek) means nurse, i.e., the one who takes care of the sick.
"propolis" (in greek) means the material in front of the city, and "acropolis" means the material at the end of the city, and "polis" means ... you guessed it... city! No idea who chose "propolis".
Many more greek words have found their way in beekeeping.

Stavros

Stavros


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## byron

stavros said:


> Please do not confuse latin and greek--the latter were written about 800 years before the former...... "Melissa" is a greek word and means "honey bee".
> "melifera" (in greek) means honey-carrying (meli=honey, fera=carrying), as used in apis-melifera.


 I don't think I confused Latin and Greek. When Carolus Linnaeus named all the plants and animals then known, Latin was the language of the scientific world, so everything got Latin names. _Melli_ is Latin for "honey" and _ferre_ is Latin for "to bear." _Apis_ is Latin for "bee." 

But isn't it technically correct to say that these words mean the same in Latin and Greek both? So "Melissa" means "honeybee" in Greek and Latin, right? If your main beef is that the Greeks started it and the Latin language stole it, fine. We'll let the Greeks and Italians duke it out to see who is way better than the other or whatever. 


Rumor has it that Carolus Linnaeus, who named the honey bee apis mellifera, later tried to correct his mistake. He realized that honey bees do not carry honey—they carry nectar—so he tried to change the name to Apis mellifica, the name for a honey-making bee. But he was too late. The rules for the naming of species dictate that the older name takes precedence.


----------



## stavros

Dear Byron,
You seem to be confusing latin and greek, I am not sure why. "meli" is a greek word, which was borrowed by latin at least 800 years after it was used in ancient greek. For instance, meli appears numerous times in Homer's Iliad and Odessy, which were "written" about 800BC and were orally told for at least 300 years before that. Much later, near the BC/AD boundary "meli" was borrowed by latin, and even more later than that, other greek words (such as spermatheka, propolis) were borrowed by English. But the origin of those words remains greek. If you wish, you can find a reference for a latin word "meli" that predates Homer, but until you come up with such a reference, the lineage of the word is greek. It's not about greeks versus italians, it's about history which so often gets confused especially when people do not go back to the roots of the origins. As for historical references to beekeeping, greeks were certainly not the first: the egyptians raised bees systematically way before them. I will not continue this thread which seems to have less to do with beekeeping, and more about history. 
Stavros


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## sqkcrk

byron said:


> The Egyptian beeks had their bees on rafts going up and down the Nile depending on which flowers were blooming at particular times.


Certainly some of them may have done this. But, just like today, not all bkprs in Ancient Egypatian times were migratory bkprs, were they? Unless there is some reason to believe otherwise.


----------



## byron

stavros said:


> Dear Byron,
> You seem to be confusing latin and greek, I am not sure why. "meli" is a greek word, which was borrowed by latin at least 800 years after it was used in ancient greek.


Ah yes, OK, you are correct, of course. I won't go so far as to say that it's a distinction without a difference, since this seems to be very important to you. But to say that _apis mellifera_ is the Latin for "bee that carries honey" is proper and correct, also. You may dislike the fact that it was Greek before it was Latin, and I'm very sorry for that, but unless the ancient Greeks fell from the sky with their language intact, they must have borrowed from other earlier cultures as well. And somewhere a chimp is going to log in to this forum and demand credit for all human language beginning with his culture to begin with. 

But yes, I am sorry for falling into the trap of referring to the "Latin" for something, I'm sure everyone of Greek descent hates that, and must remain ever vigilant in order to pounce at every instance of it. 
And yes, this thread does seem to be more geared towards the history of bee keeping rather than the technique. There are several other threads here where one can learn that the super goes on top.


----------



## hpm08161947

This thread has been all over the place. But except for the occasional personality clashes, I seem to have enjoyed it. At least I keep reading it. So I am thinking, is it fair to say that the Egyptians were the first systematic beekeepers. And by systematic, I mean reproducing their own colonies, possibly even breeding their own queens.


----------



## byron

hpm08161947 said:


> This thread has been all over the place.


 Yeah, I've enjoyed most of it also. I knew it could be an informative thread once we got rid of the people denying the very existence of evidence.



hpm08161947 said:


> ....is it fair to say that the Egyptians were the first systematic beekeepers?


I'm going to say no, and suggest the Sumerians as the originals.
The Mesopotamian civilization of Sumer is believed to have flourished between 5300 - 3500 BC. In addition to producing dozens of cultural firsts – or inventions, Sumerians appear to have been the first to depict winged figures in art, including humans with wings. They were also the first to use a wheel, but they basically came to Mesopotamia from the sea already with the wheel and many other technological advances with them, which is why nobody really knows where the wheel was developed. 
We know the Sumerians were white with fair hair and blue eyes, as they depicted themselves in statues:



















*"....Many authorities consider that Egypt owes her civilization to the people of the Euphrates [Sumerians]. There is no doubt that there is a connection, but whether direct or indirect we do not know."*

- Walter B. Emery _Archaic Egypt_


This was their bee goddes:










In the archeological museum of Istanbul, there is a relief of the Sumerian Governor of Mari (a center of Dagon worship) which bears an inscription relating his introduction of the practice of beekeeping:

_*"I introduced the flies which collect honey, which in the time of my predecessors was unknown, and located them in the garden, town of Gabarini that they might collect honey and wax..." *_


"By about 4000 BC, most of the Fertile Crescent was occupied by Caucasians. Probably Semitic peoples had already begun to penetrate it by them too, their pressure grew until by the middle of the third millennium BC (well after the appearance of civilization) they would be well established in central Mesopotamia, across the middle sections of the Tigris and Euphrates. The interplay and rivalry off the Semitic peoples with the Caucasians, who were able to hang into the higher lands which enclosed Mesopotamia from the north-east, is one continuous theme that scholars have discerned in the early history of the area. By 2000 BC, the peoples whose languages form part of what is called the 'Indo-European' group have also entered the scene, and from two directions. One of these peoples, the Hittites, pushed into Anatolia from Europe, while their advance was matched from the east by that of the Iranians. Between 2000 BC and 1500 BC branches of these sub-units dispute and mingle with the Semitic and Caucasian peoples in the Crescent itself." -ROBERTS, J.M,, The Hutchinson History of the World, Hutchinson Publishing Group, first published 1976, page 62-63.


----------



## byron

sqkcrk said:


> ..not all bkprs in Ancient Egypatian times were migratory bkprs, were they? Unless there is some reason to believe otherwise.


Of course not, there's no reason to believe any of it. If you recall, I was wondering what type of bees the Egyptians kept, and whether or not Greek bees/beekeeping had any influence on Egyptians, even though Egyptians were beeking earlier than the Greeks. You wondered, then, why in Egypt they didn't use Greek TBHs, so I guessed that the cylindrical tubes stacked horizontally made more sense on the rafts the beeks ran up and down the Nile. I don't know if land based beeking influenced river based beeking or vice versa or neither.

Practically all notable Greeks went to Egypt for education, as noted by *Diodorus of Sicily*, Book I, [96, 1-2]:

_ "But now that we have examined these matters, we must enumerate what Greeks, who have won fame for their wisdom and learning, visited Egypt in ancient times, in order to become acquainted with its customs and learning. . . .
. . .Homer and Lycurgus of Sparta, and Plato, and that there also came Pythagoras of Samos and the mathematician Eudoxus [The famous astronomer, geographer, and mathematician of Cnidus, pupil of Plato.]. . . "_ 

I find it hard to believe the Greeks and Egyptians didn't share notes on something they both worshipped, honey bees and the keeping of them. 

Or maybe they both saw each others style of beeking and shared neither their bees nor techniques with each other. I'd love to know....


----------



## WLC

'Can anyone find reports of DNA studies done on honey bees found in Egyptian tombs?'

Just in case you really mean it...



> Primer Code(3 to 12 letters): LCO_Hym Primer Name: Alias Codes(Comma Separated):Target Marker: COI-5P
> ****tail Primer: No
> Primer Sequence (5' to 3'): TATCAACCAATCATAAAGATATTGG Direction: F
> Reference/Citation: Folmer et al., 1994 Notes: Slightly modified for Hymenoptera.
> 
> Folmer Primer Set, The primer set LCO1490 and HCO2198 amplify a 658 bp fragment of the COI gene in a wide range of invertebrate taxa (Folmer et al. 1994).
> 
> LCO1490: 5'-GGTCAACAAATCATAAAGATATTGG-3' Forward
> HCO2198: 5'-TAAACTTCAGGGTGACCAAAAAATCA-3' Reverse.


I've used, 5''-TATCAACCAATCATAAAGATATTGG-3' Direction: F Hymenopteran,
and HCO2198: 5'-TAAACTTCAGGGTGACCAAAAAATCA-3' Reverse.

with success.

I've also worked on a methodology for using honey as the nucleic acid source.

Got any ancient Egyptian (or other) honey?
Honey preserves nucleic acid rather well.


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## hpm08161947

byron said:


> I'm going to say no, and suggest the Sumerians as the originals.
> .


After spending the last hour or so reading about Sumerians and the state of their Agriculture, I would be a bit surprised if they had not developed some type of systematic beekeeping. I gather they produced the first organized agricultural society. So where did they come from? Caucasians from the sea, bringing the the wheel with them - 5000 BC. The Caucasus (sp) areas?


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## byron

WLC said:


> 'Can anyone find reports of DNA studies done on honey bees found in Egyptian tombs?'


Here's what I found on DNA and honey bees:

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/06/ancient-bees/

*Honeybee remains found in a 3,000-year-old apiary* have given archaeologists a one-of-a-kind window into the beekeeping practices of the ancient world.

The hives were uncovered in 2007 at an excavation in Tel Rehov, Israel, home to the flourishing Bronze and Iron Age city of Rehov. Mazar and his team found more than 100 hives, capable of housing an 1.5 million bees and producing half a ton of honey.

In a paper published June 8 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers analyzed bees preserved in honeycomb that was charred, but not completely burnt by fire that likely destroyed the rest of the apiary.

Unfortunately for would-be makers of ancient honey, heat damaged the bees’ DNA, making it impossible to revive their genes in modern bees. But the researchers were at least able to* identify them as Apis mellifera anatoliaca, a subspecies found only in what is now Turkey*. It’s possible that A. m. anatoliaca’s range has changed, but more likely that Rehov’s beekeepers traded for them.

[So I know it's only 3,000 years ago, but Palestine/Israel is right next to Egypt.....]


Hinfl Variation in Mitochondrial DNA of Old World Honey Bee Subspecies

http://jhered.oxfordjournals.org/content/87/1/35.full.pdf

The iberica-naf EcoRI pattern occurs in about 10% of 500 Iberian honey bee colonies examined (Sheppard WS, unpublished data) and was not found in any of the other races in this study.
Therefore, the original source for this haplotype in South American populations is quite likely in* Iberia rather than sub-Saharan Africa *as previously suggested (Rinderer
et al. 1991; Sheppard et al. 1991a).




http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/AR/archive/feb95/dna0295.htm

Amid the priceless artifacts at the Egyptian Museum in Torino,
Italy, Steve Sheppard *prepared to remove pieces of 3,000-year-old honey bees imbedded in beeswax.*
The museum curators were anxious—hovering "about 6 inches away from me," Sheppard recalls—as he removed leg fragments of honey bees that got caught in the wax so long ago. The U.S. Department of Agriculture scientist brought the bee pieces back to his laboratory in Beltsville, Maryland, where he hopes they'll help shed light on the honey bee's evolution. 

Sheppard said genetic markers have helped researchers determine the effect of historical introductions of honey bees into the United States. Sheppard and Beltsville Bee lab entomologist Nathan Schiff have conducted DNA studies verifying that bees from Africa have been here longer than originally thought.

They've found genetic markers specific to one of two bee races that were *brought into the United States from Africa in the 1800's and bred with wild populations *predominately imported from Europe. Honey bees are not native to the United States.


http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Honey-bee

Some other types of related bees produce and store honey, but only members of the genus Apis are true honey bees.

In 1622, European colonists brought the dark bee (A. m. mellifera) to the Americas, followed later by Italian bees (A. m. ligustica) and others. Many of the crops that depend on honey bees for pollination have also been imported since colonial times. Escaped swarms (known as "wild" bees, but actually feral) spread rapidly as far as the Great Plains, usually preceding the colonists. *Honey bees did not naturally cross the Rocky Mountains; they were carried by ship to California in the 
early 1850s.*


----------



## WLC

Uuhhh...

byron.

You asked the question. I was telling you which primers to use for barcoding.


----------



## byron

hpm08161947 said:


> After spending the last hour or so reading about Sumerians....So where did they come from?


Short answer, nobody knows for sure.

"The Sumerian civilization became known to the modern world as a result of references to Sumer in writings found through the investigation of the ruins of Babylon and related cities. These Babylonian references were to a* civilization that was ancient even in Babylonian times.*

The story of Sumer is like the plot to a science fiction story. The modern world learns of its existence through references in an ancient literature to a still more ancient times. The Sumerians appeared at the dawn of history as a fully developed society with a technology and organization that was different and superior to the other societies of the time. And civilization itself seems to have stemmed from this alien and mysterious people." 

http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/sumer.htm


----------



## byron

WLC said:


> You asked the question. I was telling you which primers to use for barcoding.


Was that confusing? Sorry. I wasn't implying that you had asked the question, I just wanted to quote/paste the question again at the top of that post so readers would know what question the following information was in relation to.


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## WLC

OK.

If you want to compare species of Honeybees (or invertebrates in general), those are the kinds of primers you would use. COI stands for cytochrome oxidase I (it's mitochondrial) and it's the standard.

I've noticed in a number of the references above that they don't appear to be using standardized barcoding (or sampling).

That would make the task of determining phylogeny that much harder.


----------



## hpm08161947

byron said:


> Short answer, nobody knows for sure.


I have since uncovered some pretty interesting theories, perhaps I best say hypotheses involving the Grooved Ware (Pottery Reference) people of Europe. As you may well know these are the people credited with the likes of Stonehenge and such structures. To imagine that some split off group wound up becoming Sumerians is intriguing. But I guess there are many theories.


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## waynesgarden

byron said:


> I knew it could be an informative thread once we got rid of the people denying the very existence of evidence.


And who, exactly, has been "got rid of?" There is only one person here that has "got rid of" anyone that I know of and the word "moderator" appears after his name.

I did admit to having misspelled "archaeology" in my typing though, and for having graciously pointed that out to me, I conceded the entire argument and ended the debate. 

Still, the statement "all of the oldest skeletal remains found in North America are Caucasian and predate the earliest known Indians by thousands of years," while "proven" on Beesource by the many cut and paste citations of individuals whose research offers up a possibility of alternate theories, it continues to appear that major institutions in the scientific world are not ready yet to embrace this "fact." 

Even the Smithsonian, the home of Dennis Stanford, only ventures to use terms and phrases like "possible" and "not ruling out the possibility" and "hypothesis" and "may have" when discussing the subject. Other scientific groups use terms like "debate" and "controversey." While it may be certain in the minds of the researchers cited, they seem to have trouble making it the law of the scientific land.

As I said, your battle is with the scientific establishment. Facing no argument on Beesource in a thread wildly off-topic is not a very remarkable achievement. You could cut and paste until you are blue in the face, arguing that the world is flat, and you will likely win the debate here. Perhaps one or two will agree with you, most will not care, and many know that an off-topic argument serving no purpose is a gross waste of time and so just say, " ok, you're right." 

However, no one has "got rid of" anyone, sir.

Wayne


----------



## WLC

In my opinion...

The real source of the controversey is Tammy Horn's, 'Bees in America: How the Honeybee Shaped a Nation'.

There's alot of material in that book that I would not only call controversial, I would say that it shows an outright bias.

It's as if New Spain had absolutely no influence on the 'shaping of a nation'.

That's an absurd and untenable view for an author to take.


----------



## byron

hpm08161947 said:


> As you may well know these are the people credited with the likes of Stonehenge and such structures.


Beekeeping in Britain

Beekeeping has probably existed in Britain since pre-Christian times and was known to the ancient Druids. Since the time of the Romans, dome-shapd hives made of wattle and daub have been in use. These were made from willow or hazel twigs woven together and plastered with cow dung!
Gradually they were replaced by straw skep basket hives. *Skep is an old Norse word meaning basket.*


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## waynesgarden

sqkcrk said:


> 30 years a Beekeeper, never a beek. Are we really that lazy? ........
> 
> .....Wayne, maybe, since Michael Bush has left the conversation, it is he who is being refered to.


Not uncommon for someone brand new to a hobby or profession to use some perceived slang terms in order to try and fit in. I tried using the term "beek" a few times and just didn't seem comfortable.

Michael did leave the conversation, though not surprisingly. I admire a man that will maintain his dignity and composure even while his ethnicity is being denigrated with disparaging terms. Perhaps it is out of respect for Barry and the forum he has provided that he left rather than forcing the issue.

Wayne


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## WLC

I think that there's a difference between expressing politically incorrect views on one's own thread and trolling just because no one has stopped you, yet.


----------



## byron

WLC said:


> The real source of the controversey is Tammy Horn's, 'Bees in America: How the Honeybee Shaped a Nation'.
> It's as if New Spain had absolutely no influence on the 'shaping of a nation'.


Wasn't that book only written in 2005? All the author could have done is quote from earlier source material, as it appears she did when mentioning the documentation of the White Man's Flies. I also found this excerpt from that book:

*"Many Indians learned to value bees and their products, but one settler wrote that the Osage Indians in 1836 had held a day of mourning because they had found a swarm of bees; it was a sign that the Osage ways were doomed."* 

That goes to this thread's topic, which is the fact that honey bees were unknown in the U.S. until brought here by Europeans.

I know you have mentioned a few times that she didn't mention New Spain and it's influence on beekeeping, so I'm curious, what sources of information was she ignoring? I haven't read her book, so I don't know. We don't know, do we, whether or not the European honey bees brought to the Western Hemisphere by Spain actually traveled to the U.S.

Do we know that the beekeeping practices of the Spaniards were different or had any influence on North American beekeeping? 

Wouldn't the Amerinds still have referred to the Spaniard's honey bees as "White Man's Flies"? Spaniards are White also, so if Indians are documented as saying that, they could have been referring to the fact that bees signalled the arrival of White people, period. 

I see that there is another story of an Indian commenting about White farmers, saying that the, "White man work. White man make horse work. He make oxen work, now he even make flies work." There seems to be several instances of Amerinds calling honey bees "flies." 

I guess I'm not sure what you are saying. Do you think that author made everything up? Does she have references in the book? 

I mean, even if the bees brought by Spain made it to parts of the U.S. before the bees brought by the English, the point still remains that it was Europeans that brought the European honey bee here, right? 

Maybe I'm totally misreading your post.....


----------



## WLC

Byron:

We all know that New Spain had a great influence on the history of the U.S. . Frankly, much of the continental United States was the territory of New Spain at one time. I would argue that New Spain not only still exists as a culture in the U.S., but it is in resurgence.

How do you research Honeybees/beekeeping in New Spain?

I'm of the opinion that your best bet would be to find the records of the multitude of spanish missions in the continental U.S. .

Yes, I mean the Jesuits, Franciscans, etc. . Didn't a Franciscan priest plant the first almond orchard out in California? Hmmm.

Besides the religous orders themselves, your best bet for finding those records is to go to the Vatican. I'm not convinced that the author even tried.

What I'm saying is this: you can't write a book about the history of beekeeping in the U.S. and leave out a really big piece of it. That's not scholarly. Frankly, I'd call that a serious flaw.


----------



## lazy shooter

Hey, it wasn't Lazy. I'm Lazy.


----------



## byron

WLC said:


> Didn't a Franciscan priest plant the first almond orchard out in California? Hmmm.


Apparently in the 1700's, and I'll bet he wished he had known to bring bees with him because there weren't any there then. 


WLC said:


> We all know that New Spain had a great influence on the history of the U.S.
> Your best bet for finding those records is to go to the Vatican. I'm not convinced that the author even tried.
> You can't write a book about the history of beekeeping in the U.S. and leave out a really big piece of it. That's not scholarly. Frankly, I'd call that a serious flaw.


I don't know, I would think with all of the documentation about bees on this continent, she wouldn't have to go to the Vatican to research anything. If it happened here it would have been documented here, I'd think. And if it wasn't documented, how would she be able to write about it today? What resource could she reference if it wasn't written about at the time?

Actually, according to Eva Crane, instead of coming to the U.S. from "New Spain," *European honey bees actually entered Mexico from Texas and California after those two states had been settled*. (page 362)

You have to remember that when "New Spain" was being actively explored centuries ago, the Spanish were mainly hunting for gold to fund violent squabbles with their neighbors back home. By and large, they didn't bring their women, they weren't trying to start farms and families then, and they wouldn't be expected to want to bring colonies of honey bees. And so it appears that they didn't. 

New Spain may have played a part in shaping the New World's history, but beekeeping wasn't part of the equation.
That might be why Tammy Horn didn't include it in her book. 

All of the following information comes from_ The world history of beekeeping and honey hunting_ by Eva Crane.
I didn't even copy and paste this, I actually typed it up verbatim from the book, which should satisfy certain board members that believe copy/paste is an illegitimate means of conveying valid information via a computer on the internet. 

The Yucutan Peninsula of Mexico only had European bees introduced in 1900. Yucutan and Chiapas had stingless bees before this.

Central America got it's first European honey bees in 1830 when they were taken from Costa Rica to Guatemala.

In 1852 the Honolulu Agricultural Society offered a premium to the first person who could bring the first honey bees to the islands there. 

Belize got honey bees only in 1957.

There is reported an unconfirmed belief that the Germans started modern beekeeping in Nicuragua between 1850-1900 to pollinate the coffee crops.

Honey bees got to Panama by 1960.

The British captured Jamaica from the Spanish in 1655 and are believed to have brought bees there then.

The English brought bees to Barbados by 1657, Bermuda by 1617, Cayman by 1885.

Australia had to wait until about 1822 to get their bees, introduced to provide the settlers with honey. While honey bees weren't brought to New Zealand until 1842.

France took them to Guadaloupe and Martinique by 1689, and Switzerland gave them to Puerto Rico by 1864. 

Australians gave honey bees to Papua New Guinea in 1948.

---------------------
Unless Eva Crane wrote a crappy book too, it doesn't look like European honey bees possibly flew out of New Spain to anywhere, much less before those brought by the English in the 1600's.

I included stuff not pertaining to New Spain just for general interest and a point of reference in the timeline.


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## sqkcrk

waynesgarden said:


> rather than forcing the issue.
> 
> Wayne


Forcing the issue is not Michaels' way. He has better things to do. He's a well grounded individual and this isn't his fight. I gotta go share a sweat w/ him some day.


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## sqkcrk

byron said:


> Let me know if you need some help coming up with a real user name, looks like it's missing a few letters, too. IMHO. FWIW. LOL. OK, I'll STFU.


I'll be the first to admit my hypocracy. BUT, I chose my name, it wasn't put on me by a "newcomer", welcome as you are. And I abreviate beekeeper all the time, using "bkpr", which, to me sounds like beekeeper if you think about it.

sqkcrk is Squeak Creek w/ all the vowels taken out. Try to change ones Name. Unless you are prepared to pay for it, it can't be done. From what I've been told when I tried.

You sure have alot to add, what w/ only two fingers. 

Just a pet peeve of mine. I yell at the radio too when I hear supposedly intelligent people say stuff like "There's lots of ways to screw up the English language." When they meant to, or should have said, "There ARE ..."

WTF, which means Welcome To Facebook. Welcome to beesource byron.


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## sqkcrk

lazy shooter said:


> Hey, it wasn't Lazy. I'm Lazy.


 Yeah, we noticed. So Post more.


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## sqkcrk

byron said:


> I don't know, I would think with all of the documentation about bees on this continent, she wouldn't have to go to the Vatican to research anything.
> 
> Central America got it's first European honey bees in 1830 when they were taken from Costa Rica to Guatemala.
> 
> Belize got honey bees only in 1957.
> 
> Honey bees got to Panama by 1960.


Panama? U sure that isn't AHB she is refering to? And Belize being right next door to Guatemala, it seems like swarms would have moved next door earlier than that.

Documentation of what was shipped to Jamestown in 1619 was located in Englandf, where the ships logs were kept. So, the person who brought that knowledge to us here had to go find it there. But, the internet would fix that if the info is available via the web.


----------



## WLC

> Eva Crane's 'The World History of Beekeeping and Honey Hunting':
> 
> 'Statements have been made implying that early Franciscan or Jesuit missionaries kept bees in the Sonoran desert spanning the Arizona-Mexican border as early as the 1500s, but I have been unable to locate or identify any original report.'
> 
> 'As early as 1513, Herrera's 'Obra de Agricultura' mentioned the difficulty of transporting bees to the newly discovered indies.'
> 
> 'Brand (1970, published 1988) concluded from various sources that the Spanish probably introduced honeybees in the 1520s or 1530s.'


That was Eva Crane as well.

I've no doubt that the Spanish had already introduced european honeybees to New Spain earlier than other europeans had to New England.

As for why she should have researched some other archives like the records at the Vatican...

...they ran all of the missions with all of those 'spanish sounding' names.

While you say that the Spanish were here for plunder, the Catholic church was here for a different reason. They were on a 'mission'.

They successfully converted many of the natives to Catholicism.

That's a major effort that obviously would have left a considerable paper trail.

Now the question is: were those documents written in Spanish, or were they written in Latin?

That would be a major barrier for someone without significant language skills.


----------



## sqkcrk

Whitemans' Fly? White mans' argument? Whitemans' concern?


----------



## WLC

Here's a link to a thesis on: 'Apalachicola’s Gold: Archaeology and History of Tupelo Honey Production in Northwest Florida'

http://www.honeytraveler.com/documents/hockersmiththesis.pdf

I haven't gone through it yet. But, it might be worth downloading.

This is a reference I would like to find:

Brand, Donald D.
1988 The Honey Bee in New Spain and Mexico. Journal of Cultural Geography 9(1):71-81.


----------



## byron

waynesgarden said:


> Still, the statement "all of the oldest skeletal remains found in North America are Caucasian and predate the earliest known Indians by thousands of years..."


*I'll repeat (again) the scientists from the University of California:
Though many tribes believe their history goes further back, scientists can only confidently trace the ancestry of Native Americans to about 7,000 years ago.*

Wayne, can you or can you not find a scientific source to contradict this?



waynesgarden said:


> Even the Smithsonian, the home of Dennis Stanford, only ventures to use terms and phrases like "possible" and "not ruling out the possibility" and "hypothesis" and "may have" when discussing the subject.


 But Wayne, dear friend, do you not understand that those vague, non-committal words and phrases are _the very same ones they use_ when asked if "Indians" were here first? Some folks have become too emotionally invested in the matter. We should dispassionately let the evidence lead us. 



waynesgarden said:


> While it may be certain in the minds of the researchers cited, they seem to have trouble making it the law of the scientific land.


Wayne, please go read some studies or periodicals, or at least listen to the press conferences.....it is not uncommon for scientists to say, "we now know," and proceed to discuss things that are not agreed to by 100% of the population and have not yet made it into Junior's 7th grade history or biology book. The Solutrean theory is just a theory. But so is gravity and evolution. You know how long it took to get evolution into a few school books? Does everybody agree on evolution? Not all scientists can even agree that evolution occurred. Science isn't a democracy, you don't get a vote. Things don't become true just because they become popular. What about man made global warming? Just a theory, and preeminent scientists lined up on both sides calling each other idiots. 

Do you or do you not retract your claim that no reputable evidence has even been presented to archeology that Amerinds were preceded here by many others, much longer ago?

I still don't think the early people from the Old World brought honey bees with them, but when someone flatly claims that they didn't come here and there isn't even any evidence of their presence, it's hard for adults with critical thinking skills to be patient for long. In fact, as the overwhelming evidence continues to pile up these days and the politically correct walls built to constrain the truth slowly start to crumble away, you can start to hear the crackle of thin ice when certain folks continue to demand that the Amerinds/proto-********** were the first humans in the Western Hemisphere. 

Wayne, would you actually contribute to this thread by answering the three underlined questions? Go ahead and look some stuff up and let us know, we won't tease you for copying and pasting a few links.


----------



## byron

waynesgarden said:


> Michael did leave the conversation, though not surprisingly. I admire a man that will maintain his dignity and composure even while his ethnicity is being denigrated with disparaging terms. Perhaps it is out of respect... that he left rather than forcing the issue.


Nobody's ethnicity was denigrated, sir, for one thing. For another, what issue could he possibly have forced? The thread was actually started because Michael Bush was oblivious to the fact that honey bees were brought to North America by Europeans. Perhaps once the facts about the origin of apis mellifera here started being posted, he realized that he had nothing else to add to the conversation and went to go give more advice to new folks on other threads. 
I have all the respect in the world for Bush's efforts at bee keeping over the years, and I always find his advice interesting and informative. But he has proven that you can keep a lot of bees and not necessarily know their history. I'm actually surprised that he didn't admit his error, but maybe that's not how he rolls. Some folks don't like being corrected.

In fact, I'm curious if the people who claimed that honey bees are indigenous to North America have had a chance to absorb the facts about that at least and are willing to admit their mistake?



waynesgarden said:


> It doesn't seem a stretch to think that the "white man's flies" were easily recognizable by the first residents as simply being different (larger, more numerous, etc.) from the honeybees they were used to seeing.





WLC said:


> I'd think that the "native americans" were already very familiar with bees so there would be no reason for them to call them anything else but 'bee' in their own language.


Familiar with bees, but not honey bees, right?



Michael Bush said:


> The Indians all agree the cows were not here and the horses were not here. I have not heard any of them say the bees were not here.


Oh, goody, we were waiting for them to agree that we brought cows and horses. How nice of them.



Michael Bush said:


> I don't know if bees were here already or for how long but some Spanish writings from the 1500s say that honey bees that looked identical to the ones in Spain were native and they go into great detail about all the bees (stingless and otherwise) and hornets and wasps they identified.


No link and no reference, sooo....I think the most they could be referring to is the stingless bees of the Mayans, which never made it to North America. There is no documentation from Spainiards or anyone else, in the 1500's or any other time, of native honey bees in North America. If you can find it, let us know.



Michael Bush said:


> Possibly the honey bee escaped much earlier from Spanish settlers than people thought


 This is beside the obvious point that even if bees had "escaped much earlier from Spanish settlers," that would still mean that Europeans brought them since Spain is in Europe.



Michael Bush said:


> or possibly the Chinese brought them back when they colonized California.


Now, I let that one go because I'm nice, but I'm amazed that W. didn't jump on it. The Chinese colonized California? Really? Be careful Mr. Bush, if that's not in the history books or accepted by every scientist who ever lived, some folks on this board might take issue with that. I'm surprised you got a pass. But really, if you have any evidence (not even proof, mind you, just evidence) that the Chinese colonized California and perhaps brought bees, please do share.

About the original topic of Europeans bringing apis mellifera to the Western Hemisphere, I think the evidence and documentation is all in and there isn't much more serious debate about that, unless someone has new facts or evidence, although this does continue to be informative, interesting, and apparently one of the most popular threads on this board.


----------



## byron

WLC said:


> I've no doubt that the spanish had already introduced European honeybees to new spain earlier than other Europeans had to New England.


You might be right. On the one hand, Crane's book says that Hernandez was in New Spain from 1570-1577 and described how the bees and honey there were similar to Spain's. Hmmmm, Spain didn't have stingless bees, so could he have been seeing descendants of bees brought from Spain earlier?

But actually, I think I found the best argument for your case:
Crane's book (I don't have it, I'm just reading the available pages on Google Books) says that introduction of bees into New Spain was _prohibited_. This might have been done to protect the wax industry in Cuba, or to protect the interests of beekeepers in Spain. 

Aha, if it was prohibited, I have to imagine that it was being done anyway, right? People are people and prohibition never works, whether it's alcohol, drugs, or new scary scientific information. 

But, even if importing them was prohibited, there should be good documentation of them once they were there, right? It might have been illegal to import them, but it wasn't illegal to see them. 

Interesting....

And yeah, you are right, the religious guys were here on a mission alright....how much of that gold got sent back to the Church?


----------



## byron

*"First, there has been no official determination the bones are actually from ancestors of modern Native Americans.
Though many tribes believe their history goes further back, scientists can only confidently trace the ancestry of Native Americans to about 7,000 years ago."*--_Wired Science_


byron said:


> Wayne, can you or can you not find a scientific source to contradict this?


Actually, you don't have to, I can. I was wrong. I've been looking into this for the last hour or two, and I actually just got off the phone with Dr. Brian M. Kemp, Ph.D., University of California, Davis. He said the science magazine got that a little bit wrong, because in that quote above, they didn't specify that they were only referring to La Jolla, not the whole country. It's the Kumeyaay tribe that can only be confirmed to have been in that area for 7,000 years. The La Jolla skeletons are older than that, and since they can't be studied, it's not known if the skeletal remains are from that tribe, or are even Amerind at all. 

And yeah, there are skeletons older than 7,000 years old that have been determined to be Caucasoid in origin by anthropologists, but he said that doesn't necessarily mean that they were what we refer to as White. Just means they have those features. 

I asked him about all the pre-Clovis stuff and Solutrean spear points, etc...and he said he's aware of all that, but since he's a geneticist and not an archeologist he can't speak to it. 

I also spoke on the phone today with J. Daniel Rogers, Curator of North American Archeology at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. He said the oldest known Indian skeletal remains were a total of six sets of remains that date from 10-12,000 BC. He also said that the only pre-Clovis site that has finally satisfied all archeologists and ended the debate about Clovis/pre-Clovis is the one in Monte Verde, Chile. Other sites are being argued about still. 

So, there is consensus about pre-Clovis civilization, but it's in Chile, not North America.

Neither one of these guys knew a thing about honey bees.

Like I said, we should let the evidence lead us. I interpreted that quote incorrectly and drew incorrect conclusions from it.

I was wrong about the oldest Caucasoid skeletal remains predating Indian stuff.


----------



## WLC

Sorry about your hypothesis hitting the skids, but...

I've gotten a hold of this reference:

Brand, Donald D.
1988 The Honey Bee in New Spain and Mexico. Journal of Cultural Geography 9(1):71-81.

These are some his conclusions as well as other useful insights:

First of all, the church would have required beeswax for their candles. Other sources wouldn't do. So, they would either have to import it from Spain, or produce it locally in New Spain.

Secondly, Dr. Brand concluded that European Honeybees had been introduced into New Spain in the 1520s or 1530s.

Thirdly, the religious orders brought the european bees to northern Mexico where they were introduced to the indians and eventually went wild in the Sierra Madres.

Finally, Hernando Cortes (and his mother) owned an apiary in Spain.

That's right.

The man, who's army of spaniards conquered the Aztecs in 1521, was a beekeeper!

In fact, many of the spaniards who followed Cortes were from a major beekeeping region of Spain.

So, it does make sense to say that european Honeybees were first introduced to the New World by the Spaniards. 

My only caveat is that I don't as yet have access to his 66 pages of notes and references for this paper which are available as the Brand Papers in the archives of the University of Texas, Austin. The above paper that I've obtained is only 10 pages.


----------



## byron

WLC said:


> First of all, the church would have required beeswax for their candles. Other sources wouldn't do. So, they would either have to import it from Spain, or produce it locally in New Spain.


Remember what Crane said about importing bees into New Spain being illegal because Cuba had a beeswax industry and Spain itself had a strong beekeepers union or something and didn't want the competition. I'm sure Spain didn't care about the colonists being desperate for beeswax; remember, the point of the colony is to export raw materials and import finished products (does that make the U.S. a colony of China?) just like the British wanted to force their colonists to buy British tea. I can imagine they got tired of that and smuggled bees to the New World to provide for their own needs. 



WLC said:


> Secondly, Dr. Brand concluded that European Honeybees had been introduced into New Spain in the 1520s or 1530s.


Does he mention what part of New Spain?



WLC said:


> The man, who's army of spaniards conquered the Aztecs in 1521, was a beekeeper!


Well, I'm starting to admire that man even more than I used to.



WLC said:


> So, it does make sense to say that european Honeybees were first introduced to the New World by the Spaniards.


Not that it's a competition, but if England brought theirs in 1522, and Brand says Spain brought theirs in the 1520-1530s....it would be close. Especially if Spaniards brought theirs earlier and didn't document it because it was illegal.

Cool information. I should have some very interesting information soon, as well....I'm waiting for a few people to respond to my requests for answers....

Maybe these other slackers will pull their weight and do some research..........


----------



## WLC

That's something about Cortes that I didn't expect either.

In his first letter to his king, Cortes reports that natives are keeping bees and have only honey for tribute!

What kind of a commander in the field reports honeybees to his king? He's obviously a beekeeper.

I wouldn't be surprised if he had the tree-hives smoked so he could take a closer look.

My opinion is this: Cortes was likely the first european to have Honeybees sent to North America.

He ignored direct orders and forged ahead with his army anyway (kinda stubborn like a beekeeper too). So, I don't think that a ban on importing Honeybees would have made a difference (if it was even in place at that time).

If the spaniards and english brought Honeybees over around the same time, I think that the bees kept in the warmer south would have swarmed and spread as ferals far more quickly than the northeastern hives.

That's going to be tough to figure out though without alot more digging.

Both the spanish and the english kept black bees back then (if I'm not mistaken). I can see why a native might refer to them as 'flys'.

I'll wait and see if you can add to the 'picture'.

Gabriel Alonso Herrera refrs to the difficulty of transporting bees to the indies in the 'Obra de Agricultura' published in 1513. They were trying alright. Even before Cortes.


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## sqkcrk

byron said:


> Not that it's a competition, but if England brought theirs in 1522, and Brand says Spain brought theirs in the 1520-1530s....it would be close. Especially if Spaniards brought theirs earlier and didn't document it because it was illegal.


But England didn't send bees to the Colonys until 1619, not 1522.

W/out documentation y'all are just speculating about what might have happened, but, also, what might not have happened. And, w/out some sort of Paper Trail, one must assume it didn't. Rather than the opposite.

Were it illegal and done, there would be Court Records. Don't ya suppose? Not to mention Wills. Which one could easily find in Colonial Virginia.


----------



## WLC

I'd say that we know something about how the spaniards may have brought european Honeybees to New Spain around the time of Cortes.

I'm referring to the work and reports of other scholars.

However, I think that it will take some time before someone can locate definitive records of exactly when the first european Honeybees arrived in North America.

Why did I have to dig up a manuscript by Brand to find out that Cortes co-owned an apiary in Spain?

I'm not an archeologist/historian. I think that Horn should have brought this to light.

So, the english probably didn't bring beehives to NorthAmerica until the 1620s. The spanish had a 100 years head start.

How long did it take for the arfricanized Honeybee to make it from Brazil to North Carolina? 50 years.

Sorry, but I think that feral Honeybees (from the spanish) made it up north well before the english arrived in Virginia or Portsmouth.


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## Ted Kretschmann

As state earlier, if there were honeybees imported into the New World before the Spanish, it would have been by the Vikings ,who traveled up and down the east coast and maybe had more township sites on the eastern seaboard than have been discovered and excavated at this time. Honey and mead were part of their culture. And as master seamen of their time, it would have been no problem for them to have packed up a few hives of bees and brought them with them. There have been cow bones found at the Newfoundland site. So just like the Polyenisians,who conquered the Pacific, they brought their livestock with them. TK


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## WLC

TK:

I'll buy that argument as long as you can come up with some scholar's work that provides some kind of evidence for it.

Maybe. Maybe not.


----------



## sqkcrk

WLC said:


> However, I think that it will take some time before someone can locate definitive records of exactly when the first european Honeybees arrived in North America.
> 
> How long did it take for the arfricanized Honeybee to make it from Brazil to North Carolin? 50 years.
> 
> Sorry, but I think that feral Honeybees (from the spanish) made it up north well before the english arrived in Virginia or Portsmouth.


Definitive records have already been found, you are just wishing for and speculating on earlier records for some reason. I guess the way things are doesn't fit the way you wish they were?

Africanized Honeybee has expanded its' natural outward migration to NC? That's new to me. When was this determined and to what extent? You may be off by a State or two.

Think all you want, but I think you would be better off saying that IF Spaniards had bees in North America they MAY have naturally migrated to other parts of the Continent. No one knows if they did or if they did.

Historical records are like fossils, in some ways. One has to take what one has and see where they fit, IN CONTEXT, in relation to other established and known facts and other records. You've shown us a number of such, but then you go further on faith than, in my opinion, an Historian would or should and speculated on how it was, not how it might have been had such and such occured. "This way there be dragons."


----------



## WLC

sqkcrk:

I'm referring to material for the Brand reference with regards to New Spain and european Honeybees in North America.

Brand, Donald D.
1988 The Honey Bee in New Spain and Mexico. Journal of Cultural Geography 9(1):71-81.

He is the one who found thie material referred to above, and he also stated very clearly in his conclusions:

"1) There was an introduction of the European bee into New Spain in the 1520s or 1530s."

Africainzed bees in NC? That was projected in 1992. That AHB hasn't reached its northern most range, NC, is a good thing. But, yes, it is a state/county or two short of it.

The point being: Honeybees have swarmed their way up from Brazil to the southern U.S. in a mere 50 years. Knowing the reproductive biology of the european Honeybee, I'd say that they could have easily swarmed their way up from Mexico to the continental U.S. long before any englishman landed on shore.

So, Tammy Horn may have left out this information because it would have thrown a blanket on her 'white man's fly' anecdote. I think that the natives were aware of european Honeybees well before the New England colonies even existed.

Donald D. Brand is notably absent from her bibliography. That's quite an omission from a scholar writing a book titled 'Bees in America: How the Honeybee Shaped a Nation.'

Lest we forget, New Spain covered most of the continental U.S. at one time.


----------



## hpm08161947

WLC said:


> sqkcrk:
> 
> 
> Africainzed bees in NC? That was projected in 1992. That AHB hasn't reached its northern most range, NC, is a good thing. But, yes, it is a state/county or two short of it.


If AHB have reached a state/county short of NC, then I can tell you a guy who would be very familiar with this event. His name is SQKCRK (Mark).


----------



## WLC

If you want to argue about the climate limits of AHB, take it up with Taylor and Spivak: 'Climate Limits of Tropical African Honeybees in the Americas.' (1984), Bee World 65:38-47.

Of course, you both know that I'm talking about the ability of black Honeybees to swarm their way up from Vera Cruz to the southern continental U.S. well within the 100 year difference between when Brand concluded that Honeybees had been introduced to New Spain, 1520s-1530s, and when Tammy Horn reported the 'definitive' introduction of european Honeybees to America, 1620s.

As for sqkcrk, 'knowing' about the presence of AHB as far north as coastal North Carolina...

Where does he live? In a tree hollow in coastal NC?

Regardless, Apis mellifera linnaeus doesn't have the same climate limits as AHB now, does it?

It could easily have swarmed it's way northwards into New England in the space of 100 years.


----------



## WLC

It looks like Africanized Honeybees have already been found in North Carolina.

http://www.wncbees.org/docs/Reference/Africanized honey bees -- some questions and answers.pdf

Why didn't a NYS apiary inspector know this?


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## waynesgarden

There's a difference between "found" and "established." Africanized bees have bee found here in Maine. Like the bees in the story that you cite, they were "found" hitchihiking in cargo, etc.

Let us know when they are established.

Wayne


----------



## WLC

So, we know that bees can stow away on ships and move from port to port.

The spanish had plenty of ships moving around in New Spain.

Does any one still think that the black bees the spaniards brought with them didn't spread throughout New Spain (including the continental U.S.) before the european Honeybees were brought to New England?


----------



## hpm08161947

WLC said:


> It looks like Africanized Honeybees have already been found in North Carolina.


The port of Wilmington is not very far from here. Seems like tropical species are always getting introduced into the environment here. That was just one example, I would be willing to venture that AHB as well as plain old African Bees have been introduced many times! Yet... I.. who live just down the highway from this port have never seen a colony of them. So... this in itself is very good evidence that AHB cannot survive in this climate..... at least not for long.


----------



## sqkcrk

WLC said:


> when Brand concluded that Honeybees had been introduced to New Spain, 1520s-1530s, and when Tammy Horn reported the 'definitive' introduction of european Honeybees to America, 1620s.
> 
> As for sqkcrk, 'knowing' about the presence of AHB as far north as coastal North Carolina...
> 
> Where does he live? In a tree hollow in coastal NC?


Okay, so Brand concluded that Honeybees had been introduced into New Spain in the 1520s to 1530s. Fine. I agree that if that is so, they could have naturally migrated thru out the southern parts of North America before 1620 when documentation PROVES what no one needs CONCLUDE. And, that no one documented their presence in The Virginia Colony. So, I would conclude that they weren't there then, 1620, even if they could have.

I am a Commercial Beekeeper who takes his bees to SC from NY and back again. They winter in the swamps of coastal SC. Were AHB present in NC, the State to the North of SC, and known to anyone in Authority, ie NC Dept of AG, I would have heard about it and so would you, because it would have been News on beesource.com.

I don't know why you didn't mention Coastal MD and DE. That's the Projected Northern Limit I have heard mentioned from years ago.

What are the normal outward migration perameters of European Honeybees as compared to AHB? I bet AHB, w/ it's absconding behavior characteristic, travels or spreads farther annually than European Honeybees do.

Perhaps Horn has a cultural or ethnic bias. Perhaps she read the same documen tation as Brand did and came to a different conclusion and therefore decided to leave it out. I have no idea. Perhaps someone should ask her,


----------



## sqkcrk

A. What Wayne said. And did you know that AHB have been found in NY and ME? Migratory beekeepers move them. Not what I would call natural outward migration.

B. I am no longer an Apiary Inspector. Haven't held that position since end of the 2005 season.

C. With the size of the ships plying the oceans in the 1500s and 1600s, were there a swarm of bees aboard it would be known about and, I imagine, dealt with harshly. Those ships were so small that an uncontained colony of bees would be too close for comfort. The so called ships of thoser days were hardly all that much bigger than what are used in Sailing Regattas today.

D. Did Brand state unequivically that there were European Honeybees in New Spain which Spaniards brought w/ them? Did he site documentation which stated so? If not, then no, I don't blindly believe that what might have happened or could have happened actually did happen.


----------



## WLC

First, thank goodness that AHB hasn't established itself throughout its predicted range here in the U.S. .

However, I'm using AHB as a model for EHB as an invasive species.

Brand did conclude that there was an introduction of the European bee into New Spain in the 1520s or 1530s.

Yes, he cited documentation and records. He was a Dept. Chair at the University of Texas, Austin.

"Perhaps Horn has a cultural or ethnic bias"

I've come to a similar conclusion.

As for the Black bee as an invasive species...

of course it was an invasive species.


----------



## sqkcrk

hpm08161947 said:


> So... this in itself is very good evidence that AHB cannot survive in this climate..... at least not for long.


This is a case which illustrates that one lone colony often has little lasting impact. It is the supported migration expanding into a new territory that has the ability to establish a foothold. Think The Roanoke Colony(the Lost Colony) as opposed to The Virginia Company and Jamestown.

When AHBs territory expands north out of FL I have little doubt that it will be able to survive in the Low Country and Piedmont Regions of NC and SC. Until it does, no one will actually know if it will or can.


----------



## sqkcrk

WLC said:


> As for the Black bee as an invasive species...
> 
> of course it was an invasive species.


You are the only one writting about "the black bee". You don't even know if the bees Brand concludes were brought here by the Spanish were black bees or Italians or Andilusians, which is more likely, don't you think? Wouldn't it make as much sense, if not more, that thew Spaniards would bring w/ them bees from their homeland?


----------



## WLC

sqkcrk said:


> You are the only one writting about "the black bee". You don't even know if the bees Brand concludes were brought here by the Spanish were black bees or Italians or Andilusians, which is more likely, don't you think? Wouldn't it make as much sense, if not more, that thew Spaniards would bring w/ them bees from their homeland?


Brand was very clear that they were Apis mellifera mellifera Linnaeus. aka: the Holland, German or black race.

Cortes himself was a beekeeper from the Extremadura region of Spain (as were many of the early conquerors and colonists who followed him), a region of known for its honey and wax production.

Spain has a well known historical relationship with beekeeping as illustrated by Columella's (from Cadiz) 65 AD Roman treatise which contained a large section on beekeeping, as well as the honey hunting cave paintings in Cuevs de la Arana, Valencia.

http://www.britannica.com/bps/media-view/121724/0/0/0

I thought that some of you would be alot more impressed that the man who conquered the Aztecs was a beekeeper.

Of course he would send for his bees. Wouldn't you?


----------



## sqkcrk

WLC said:


> I thought that some of you would be alot more impressed that the man who conquered the Aztecs was a beekeeper.
> 
> Of course he would send for his bees. Wouldn't you?


That Cortez was a beekeeper is somewhat interesting. I'm not going to rush out and tell all my friends. After all, likje you said, "the man who conquered the Aztecs...". I don't know if that is something for beekeepers to be proud of.

Whether he did or would have sent for his bees hasn't been established, has it? No, I wouldn't send for them. I would acquire some new ones. Or learn to manage the mallipona. People complain about the cost of shipping now days. Just imagine.


----------



## WLC

A ruthless, conquistador/beekeeper like Cortes, who includes a description of stingless beekeeping by the natives in his first letter to his king, obviously had Honeybees on his mind.

After he sent boatloads of tribute back to his king, I think that it's safe to say that he could ask for european honeybees to be sent to his new city, Vera Cruz. That would be a trivial matter.

Here's a link containing some images of current stingless beekeepers in Mexico:

http://www.thehoneygatherers.com/html/photolibrary20.html

The natives haven't stopped keeping stingless bees.


----------



## byron

sqkcrk said:


> But England didn't send bees to the Colonys until 1619, not 1522.


You are right, I'm getting sloppy in my old age, first I was off by ten million years on the bee fossil, now I'm off by a century on English bees in North America. 

*The only evidence we have of the initial importation of honey bees to North America is a letter written December 5, 1621 by the Council of the Virginia Company in London and addressed to the Governor and Council in Virginia, “Wee haue by this Shipp and the Discouerie sent you diurs [divers] sortes of seedes, and fruit trees, as also Pidgeons, Connies, Peacockes Maistiues [Mastiffs], and Beehives, as you shall by the invoice pceiue [perceive]; the preservation & encrease whereof we respond vnto you…” (Goodwin 1956; Kingsbury 1906:532).*




sqkcrk said:


> Were it illegal and done, there would be Court Records.


Only if they got caught. Iran claims it has no homosexuals in it's population, too, because it's forbidden, but I'm sure Iranians can be just as degenerate as anyone else.....there just might not be any court records.

But I'm playing devil's advocate, of course you are right, we can only go by the facts and the documentation. That's unfortunate in a lot of cases, because humans love to manipulate history and facts to hide the truth sometimes....
but yeah, you are right, and thanks for pointing out my error on the dates....


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## byron

sqkcrk said:


> Perhaps Horn has a cultural or ethnic bias. Perhaps she read the same documentation as Brand did and came to a different conclusion and therefore decided to leave it out. *Perhaps someone should ask her*....


Actually, I did. After calling her last week we had a weekend e-mail exchange. Here are some of my questions and her answers:

*Byron:*
I was discussing some history on a message board, and found that even Michael Bush had no idea that honey bees were not in North America until Europeans brought them here. I don't consider that 14 million year old fossil found in Nevada to mean that they are necessarily indigenous to the U.S., any more than fossils of wooly mammoths and lemurs means that monkeys and elephants are indigenous. And in any case, the fossil doesn't mean the bees were still here when Amerinds, or whomever, first came here.

People were saying that the "White Man Flies" thing was just made up by Whites, and that many tribes had their own words for honey bee, wax, and so on, proving that they had honey bees before we showed up. Are you Indian? Didn't it say on your site that you lived on a reservation? Did those Indians have their own words for these things, and did they believe that they had honey bees before Europeans came?

*Dr. Tammy Horn:*
I lived on Pine Ridge from 1976-1979. The Sioux were a highly nomadic band, and *I wasn’t able to find in the Lakota language a name for honey bees.* This doesn’t mean that there isn’t one, just that one didn’t come up in my search. I was unable to locate the precise tribe that started using “white man’s fly,” although I gave it a valiant effort. 

*Byron:*
Anyway, one member was criticizing you for neglecting Spain/New Spain and their contributions to beekeeping in America, accusing you of flaws in your research, etc....He thought you should have gone to the Vatican to study records of the Catholics bringing hives with them.... I saw from Eva Crane's book that Spain banned the importing of bees to New Spain, perhaps to protect the interests of beekeepers back home. That might explain lack of documentation.....

This forum member thought bees brought by Spain would have traveled north and reached all the way to California and Florida long before bees brought by the English did. I pointed out that, again according to Crane, it actually is documented that the bees entered Mexico from Texas and California.....and in any case, Spaniards are white as well, so their bees could have still been White Man Flies to the Indians......


*Dr. Tammy Horn:*
In 2002-2004, my key source for New Spain was the Jesuit Relaciones, which as of 2004, didn’t list definitively an inventory for honey bees in the Spanish colonies in North America *at that time*. The Relaciones are considered to be an authoritative source for inventories; however, it is but one of the many missionary groups sent to North America. Your friend may be correct, but I honestly tried to cover and attribute New Spain’s importance by emphasizing the Camino Real in Texas, Father Perro’s beekeeping efforts in California, and the Jesuit intro of honey bees into Hawaii…That to me was sufficient given that many European countries also had colonies. I tried to give fair treatment to all, but I would have had to write another ten years, and hey, there’s always room for another book. 

*Byron:*
Also, totally different subject.....I read about the connections between ancient Greece and ancient Egypt....Most folks don't realize that Cleopatra was a Greek aristocrat, and that all Greeks of any standing (Pythagoras, etc..) went to complete their educations in Alexandria. The population of ancient Egypt was obviously much different than the people currently residing there, of course.

I'm sure they would have observed each others beekeeping methods, since both cultures valued honey bees so much. Is there any DNA evidence that ancient Egyptians ever kept European honey bees? I wonder what race of bees they did keep? It also makes me wonder about the race of bees kept by the ancient Mayans, and not the stingless junk they keep around these days. All of the cultural links between the Mayans and Egyptians is interesting, and I wonder if the bees were the same. I have read that cotton fibers in some Mayan mummies has been genetically traced to the Old World, for example....and some Egyptian mummies had tobacco and cocoa in their graves, and that was strictly New World stuff......


*Dr. Tammy Horn:*

I don’t know of a crossover between Mayan bees and Egyptian bees. Researchers have found, using the honey bee genome that Africa was the origination point for honey bees, and this differed remarkably from earlier hypothesis that India was the origination point. That may be of use to you. 

Glad to hear that you’re so excited about bees and biogeography. It is truly mesmerizing and changing by the day. The Miocene bee was classified as a honey bee because it contained pollen baskets, something that most other insects do not have. In my mind, it *counts,* even with climate change thereafter rendered it extinct. 

Hope this explains my process and is of interest to you.
Warmly,
Tammy


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## WLC

It's good thing you didn't metion the caucasian thing.


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## byron

WLC said:


> It's good thing you didn't mention the caucasian thing.


Ha, yeah, that does seem to be a touchy subject. She probably wouldn't have known anything about that, specifically. It's like asking a geneticist anthropological questions, and vice versa. Everybody is a specialist these days. Especially in science. That can be good, but it's like a bunch of archeologists digging in their own hole, deeper and deeper, continually throwing evidence up to the surface above them....None of them know what anybody else is finding, and it's good to have somebody up there at ground level going from hole to hole, inspecting everyone's finds and connecting the dots.....That's what I like to do.... I read historians, archeologists, ethnologists, anthropologists, biologists, etc...It's amazing how much informational overlap there is, but everyone is so busy with their own particular field that they are completely unaware of what is being discovered the next profession over....

Oh, here is another update from Dr. Horn:

*Tammy Horn:*
Well, even Engels admits to having to go back and rethink his earlier articles based on the Miocene honey bee. And I still have not seen any definitive proof of bees brought from New Spain prior to the Jesuit Relaciones (which again, there are many *orders* but the Jesuits seems to have covered the most territory in North America and were the most methodical in my opinion). So, more than anything, I would love to see earlier proof or *any* proof of Spanish introduction in Florida. 

Big thing: these are interesting questions your friend brings up, but don't let them get in the way of a friendship or create a rift. Life's too short and there's just no point in arguing with someone who's already made up his mind. 

If you find definitive proof or feel that I have a bias after reading the work for yourself, I'm happy to hear it, of course, but Bees in America is only one book. It has its flaws, it has its strengths. I think of it as a first-born child with all the attendant "issues," and love it anyway.


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## WLC

I think that she should read Brand, for starters.

Just let Tammy know that her next project should be, 'Honeybees in New Spain'.


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## lazy shooter

I love Tammy Horn's attitude. I'd bet my horse on her being a good gal.

Lazy


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## sqkcrk

I commend you for going to the source and publishing your conversation here. I always find that there is alot we don't know when there is any kind of dispute or disagreement. Just like on the Complaints Forum. When one gets both sides of a story much is learned.

Thank you.

So, should I continue to believe that there is no documentation of bees being brought to New Spain from Spain? And, therefore no European Honeybees existing in Virginia before the first documented importation of European Honeybees "by this ship and the Discovery" occured?

I sure would like to know the name of that other ship. Back in 1982 I couldn't figure out how to find its' name. Maybe one of you internet detectives could find that for me/us.


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## byron

sqkcrk said:


> That Cortez was a beekeeper is somewhat interesting. I'm not going to rush out and tell all my friends. After all, like you said, "the man who conquered the Aztecs...". *I don't know if that is something for beekeepers to be proud of.*


Why not? Were the Aztecs beekeepers, too? According to Eva Crane, the Aztec highlands were too cool for the stingless bees to survive, so they demanded tribute from surrounding peoples. According to records, at least 42 localities paid a wax tribute and 34 localities had to pay a honey tribute to the Aztecs. So Aztecs may have worshipped honey, but I don't think they were beekeepers (or "bkprs," or "beeks" or even "beepers") 

But don't feel sorry for the Aztecs, they were a brutal, ruthless bunch, and they had a 100,000 man army in the field, so it isn't like Cortez was stomping baby puppies or anything. His job was just made easier because the Aztecs had long believed that the "bearded white gods" would return one day, and believed the Spaniards to be related to the first white men who originally civilized the region, teaching the natives farming and architecture, etc...Whites were called the "children of the sun" because we always came by ship from the east, where the sun rises. 

But here is what our poor little Aztecs did after we let them run things by themselves for a while:

Aztecs sacrificed human victims on each of their eighteen festivities, one festivity for each of their 20-day months.
The first human sacrifice among the Aztec reported in the sources was the sacrifice and skinning of the daughter of the king Cxcox of Culhuacn; this story is a part of the legend of the foundation of Tenochtitlan.central Mesoamerican belief: that a great, on-going sacrifice sustains the Universe. 

Everything is tonacayotl: the “spiritual flesh-hood” or “bodily [sacrificial] presence” of the gods on earth. Everything earth, crops, moon, stars and people springs from the severed or buried bodies, fingers, blood or the heads of the sacrificed gods. Humanity itself is macehualli, “those deserved and brought back to life through penance”. A strong sense of indebtedness was connected with this worldview. Indeed, nextlahualli (debt-payment) was a commonly used metaphor for human sacrifice, and, as Bernardino de Sahagn reported, it was said that the victim was someone who “gave his service”.

The Aztecs believed that if sacrifices weren’t supplied for Tlloc, rain wouldn’t come and their crops wouldn’t flourish. Leprosy and rheumatism, diseases caused by Tlloc, would infest the village. Tlloc required the tears of the young as part of the sacrifice. The priests made the children cry during their way to immolation: a good omen that Tlloc would wet the earth in the raining season. 
Because the objective of Aztec warfare was to capture victims alive for human sacrifice, battle tactics were designed primarily to injure the enemy rather than kill him. After towns were conquered their inhabitants were no longer candidates for human sacrifice, only liable to regular tribute.

Slaves also could be used for human sacrifice, but only if the slave was considered lazy and had been resold three times.

For the re-consecration of Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan in 1487, the Aztecs reported that they sacrificed about 80,400 prisoners over the course of four days, though there were probably far fewer sacrifices. According to Ross Hassig, author of Aztec Warfare, “between 10,000 and 80,400 persons” were sacrificed in the ceremony. 

Michael Harner, in his 1977 article The Enigma of Aztec Sacrifice, estimates the number of persons sacrificed in central Mexico in the 15th century as high as 250,000 per year. 

Fernando de Alva Corts Ixtlilxochitl, a Mexica descendant and the author of Codex Ixtlilxochitl, claimed that one in five children of the Mexica subjects was killed annually. 

*According to Bernal Daz, the chiefs of the surrounding towns, for example Cempoala, would complain on numerous occasions to Corts about the perennial need to supply the Aztecs with 
victims for human sacrifice.*

The Anonymous Conqueror’s Narrative of Some Things of New Spain and of the Great City of Temestitan details Aztec sacrifices. In Chapter XIV he depicts the temple in which men, women, boys and girls were sacrificed. On Chapter XXIV the Anonymous Conqueror repeatedly claims that the* Aztecs were cannibals, *********, alcoholics and polygamists. *

So basically, men, women, children, slaves, captives and all of the neighboring peoples in the area were extremely happy that Cortez obliterated the Aztecs. The fact that a fellow beekeeper rid the world of these savage religious fanatics is indeed something we can all be proud of. 

Can you imagine if the Aztecs had come north and discovered America before Europeans did? There wouldn't have been a trail of tears there would have been a trail of body parts. No casinos, no nuthin'.

Of course, if we can prove the Aztecs were actually keepers of bees and not just collectors of honey/wax taxes, then I guess we can remain neutral on the whole thing.


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## sqkcrk

I don't know what one has to do w/ the other. The Aztecs, as cruel a society they were, were displaced and subjigated by a peoples less so then they? And that is what we are to be greatful for? Or laud?

My Dad often said to me, "Two wrongs don't make a right."

If you want to be proud that Cortez was a beekeeper, go ahead. I'd rather be proud that George Washington owned bees. Whether he was any more of a beekeeper than that I don't know. Was Cortez anymore than just a Gentleman/Soldier who owned bees? Was he a beekeeper or someone who owned bees? A bee haver. Not that splitting that hair really matters to me.


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## byron

sqkcrk said:


> The Aztecs, as cruel a society they were, were displaced and subjugated by a peoples less so then they? And that is what we are to be grateful for? Or laud?
> My Dad often said to me, "Two wrongs don't make a right."


I don't know, maybe you are right, but then why does everybody get all giddy about how cool it was that German civilians were carpet bombed during WWII in an effort to beat Hitler? Or that Japanese civilians were fused into the sidewalk by the hundreds of thousands in the name of "peace"? Did two wrongs make a right then? Maybe I'm just a monkey, but I always root for the home team. European savages versus Aztec savages. Go team. 

In any case, I just heard back from Greg J. Hunt, Professor of the Department of Entomology at Purdue University:


You are correct, honey bees are not native to North America. However, we do have about 4,000 species of bees that are native. At least 99% of these are solitary bees - one female makes a nest and does all the work. A few are social, like bumble bees and have queens. Some of the confusion might come from the practice of the Mayans to keep stingless bees (bees in the genera Melipona mostly, also Trigona and Scaptotrigona. They even had a honey bee god, collected wax and honey etc. 

It IS the same bee that Mayans keep today. I have tasted the honey but don't care too much for it. I was not aware of the evidence for a connection between the Maya and Egypt, but who knows? I believe the Chinese discovered the new world before the Europeans.

The center of origin of honey bees (Apis mellifera) is Africa and there are at least 2 dozen accepted races. * The pictures of bees of the Egyptians look like honey bees and their clay hives look like the bee hives of Greece in a way. * There is no evidence to suggest they kept stingless bees. Those bees are adapted to a wetter climate.

Regards,
-- 
Greg J. Hunt, Professor
Department of Entomology
901 W. State St.
Purdue University
West Lafayette IN 47907

--------------------------------------------------------

Somebody tell Michael Bush that someone else thinks the Chinese came to America before Europeans, I think Bush had the same theory.


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## WLC

sqkcrk:

I said 'impressed', not proud.

The point being this: since he had an apiary in Spain, and he reported that the natives kept Honeybees to his king, Cortes not only had Honeybees in his thoughts, he also had a 'compulsion' to try and introduce european Black bees to the Americas. In short, he had a motive.

As for why you should be impressed, I don't think that you can come up with an example of a beekeeper throughout history with more 'cojones' than Cortes. No way, no how.


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## sqkcrk

Okay. Impressed is better I guess. Cortez and Aztecs vs WWII attacks on Germany and Japan? Not even apples and oranges, are they? One was an invasion and the other a war to stop agression and criminal activety/mass murder.

Sure, and so do the guys who took out bin Laden. Suppose any of them are beekeepers?


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## byron

sqkcrk said:


> Cortez and Aztecs vs WWII attacks on Germany and Japan? Not even apples and oranges, are they? One was an invasion and the other a war to stop aggression and criminal activity/mass murder.


Nope, none of those things are either apples or oranges. 
I guess in the old days folks could be more honest. "We want your stuff so we can have it," used to be all the reason one needed to engage in massive amounts of state sponsored civil rights violations. When Peter the Great needed that sea port for his new navy, what did he tell King Charles of Sweden? Right, he said, "Hey Chuck, I'll fight you for some ocean front property." Kind of like in prison....you can give up your property to Leroy, or you can fight him for it. "I'm the rightful owner," gets you laughed at. But at least it's honest, and there is rarely a conflict unless the victim is stubborn...most of the time the option of giving someone what they want peacefully exists, unless the aggressor is sadistic and just wants to hurt you.

These days we have to invent moral mumbo jumbo to motivate the masses to kill and die in large numbers. Countries that never attacked us are carpet bombed and invaded because (fill in the blanks with some naughty behavior.) Let's kill Germans to keep them from killing people. Oh, the communists murdered 100 times more people than Hitler was even accused of? No big deal, they are in the same club as us. 

Some Muslim country makes women wear pup tents and beats them up if you can see their ankles? Let's defeat them and change the regime in the name of people rights....What? Hutus and Tootsies? Never heard of them....

We can all justify whatever we want. Christians have slaughtered Christians by the millions for 2,000 years, and both sides used the Bible to justify it.....If you can't think of any other reason to celebrate Cortez wrecking the Aztecs, his being a fellow beekeeper is as good a reason as any.


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## WLC

You're both missing the point.

Cortez had such 'cojones', that's it quite possible that he would have sent for his 'own bees' from Spain.

It fits in quite well with the profile of 'egomania'.

Meaning: 'my bees will be the first Black bees in the New World'.

If I was Cortez, that's what I would do.

He might have done it just to show the 'savages' what real beekeeping was about.

It certainly does 'fit' the man we're talking about.


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## byron

WLC said:


> You're both missing the point.


I don't think so....maybe. We probably didn't miss your point, we just didn't necessarily respond to it. I don't mind conjecture....we aren't under oath here, testifying in front of congress, we are just supposing....But yeah, I get it...Cortez _might_ have been an egomaniacal tool, he _might_ have brought European honey bees to the new world, he _might_ have done it to tease the lowland jungle people and their crap stingless bees...I'm not saying he didn't. But while we are engaging in historical conjecture, I still wonder about all the Druids that came to early America, long before Columbus or the Vikings, and whether they might have brought their bees:

*Eva Crane observed that objects found near the River Thames were constructed with Beeswax as far back as 3000 BC. And in 488 AD, the Irish Saint Bridget is said to have visited Glastonbury, which according to legend is the home of the Holy Grail and a church built by Joseph of Arimathea - and visited by his nephew Jesus Christ. Here Saint Bridget took up residence on the ‘Island of Beckery’, which translates as the ‘Beekeepers Island’.*


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## Ted Kretschmann

Byron, WLC, in what year were honeybees brought into the Carribean islands? It could not have been many years after Christopher Columbus set up governorship over the islands, along with the arrival of the Catholic faith. TK


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## byron

Ted Kretschmann said:


> .... in what year were honeybees brought into the Carribean islands?


There are tons of little islands that are considered the Caribbean Islands, here is some info on a few:

The British captured *Jamaica* from the Spanish in 1655 and are believed to have brought bees there then.
The English brought bees to *Barbados* by 1657, *Bermuda* by 1617, *Cayman* by 1885.
France took them to *Guadaloupe* and *Martinique* by 1689, and Switzerland gave them to *Puerto Rico* by 1864. 

*St Kitts & Nevis.* 
In the early 1990s there were seventy (70) bee hives in operation on Nevis. Presently the number of bee hives on Nevis has risen dramatically to three hundred (300). Honey is sold to a variety of retail and specialty stores in the Federation. The industry on St. Kitts is not as developed as that on Nevis but nevertheless it exists with approximately 43 hives in operation presently. Aside from supplying to retail and specialty stores, honey producers have been known to offer their product to the local soft drink manufacturing company.
Honey bees (Apis mellzféra life) are not indigenous to the Caribbean; they were introduced by the Europeans during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Many escapes or
“swarms” colonized in the wild as they adapted to the Caribbean fauna.

Honey bees have been managed in *Trinidad and Tobago* from the beginning of the 20th century. The first government apiary was established in Port of Spain in 1902 and a private apiary is known to have existed in Scarborough in 1918.
Beekeeping grew into a thriving business since its early pioneering days. Honey was exported between 1914 and 1958, with exports reaching a high of 71,177 pounds in 1947. However, beekeepers have faced many challenges related to the arrival of Africanised bees, pests and diseases, and diminishing institutional support.


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## WLC

TK:
According to Donald Brand (1988), Gabriel Alonso de Herrera wrote in 'Obra de Agricultura', in 1513, about the difficulty of transporting bees to the newly discovered West Indies.

Brand also mentions that Cortes had, quite early on, tried to interest the Spanish crown on the agricultural develeopment of New Spain. There were orders issued in 1523 and 1532 to that effect.

TK, you're also correct about the importance of beeswax to the Catholic liturgy. The candles must be made of pure beeswax.

Brand did mention some references for visits to the highlands by a bishop in 1601-1605, were the elevations were such (too high for stingless bees), and the quality of the wax and honey was such (white and not discolored as produced by stingless bees), that only european bees could have produced it.


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## WLC

Just a note on the arrival of the religious orders in New Spain.

'The first Franciscan missionaries, sent by Carlos V at Cortés request, arrived in Mexico in 1523 and 1524. By 1559 there were 300 Franciscan friars at 80 missions throughout Nueva España. They were followed by the Dominicans (1525), the Augustinians (1533), and finally, the Jesuits (1571).'

I think that looking through the records of the other orders that arrived in New Spain before the Jesuits would be one way to establish a firm date for when Honeybees
made it to North America.


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## byron

stavros said:


> Please do not confuse latin and greek--"Melissa" is a greek word and means "honey bee".


 And the Minoans came before the Greek ascendancy:

The bee was an emblem of Potnia, the Minoan-Mycenaean "Mistress", also referred to as "The Pure Mother Bee".[1] Her priestesses received the name of "Melissa" ("bee").

For a watchful eye, the relationship between the queen bee and the Goddess and her priestesses, dressed as bees must have seemed irristable, and in Minoan Crete the Goddess 
and her priestesses, dressed as bees, are shown dancing together on a golden seal found buried with the dead. In Crete also the bee signified the life that comes from death, as 
did the scarab in Egypt. Probably for this reason, the gold ring seal was placed in a tomb. Here the bee goddess, the figure in the center descending to earth among snakes and 
lilies, is being worshipped by her priestesses, who, characteristically, take the same form as she does, all raising their ‘hands’ in the typical gesture of epiphany. 
Honey was used to embalm and preserve the bodies of the dead.


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## waynesgarden

Are you going to start giving appropriate credit for the cut and paste "expertise" you are posting here?

The Bee Goddess site has a lot of interesting information and deserves to get credit for the second half of your last post, as well as for the image. (Wikipedia also should get credit for the first half.)

Wayne


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## byron

waynesgarden said:


> Are you going to start giving appropriate credit for the cut and paste "expertise" you are posting here?


Nope. If I didn't give you something to moan about you wouldn't participate in this thread anymore at all. Besides, I wanted to see if I could get any silly people to believe that I actually discovered that Minoan seal myself. 

But yeah, in case you hadn't caught on, the few of us still looking up stuff for this thread are Googling answers to every new question that comes up, and seeing as how we don't work for The New York Times or Newsweek, I don't think anyone feels compelled to rewrite everything. 

My general rule of thumb is:
If I'm debating someone who is disputing what I present, then I go out of my way to quote sources, just for added authenticity....Perhaps you have noticed the dozens and dozens of instances of my having done that in this thread?

If I'm just tossing something into the discussion that I found that isn't being argued or debated, I don't always feel the need to provide the multiple sources. I think most folks of average intelligence understand that I don't have ESP and can't channel information telepathically, that I'm Googling stuff and putting it here so anyone interested can do further research.

Do you still think that honey bees were kept by Amerinds before Europeans brought them here? Because I provided tons of links and sources to correct you on that, and I don't recall you ever admitting that you might be mistaken, so I thought stuff like facts and sources didn't affect your thought process. And here now you pop up demanding to see Google and Wiki get proper credit for something. 

If you decide to make an actual contribution to this thread, I'll thank you in advance. Otherwise, snipe away.


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## WLC

Don't forget to add that some of us have had to use institutional access to get to some hard to find research.

You mean 'Honeybees'. Of course the Mayans kept bees that produced honey. They still do.


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## byron

WLC said:


> Don't forget to add that some of us have had to use institutional access to get to some hard to find research.


Better link to every one of your sources or he'll get after you. Institutional access is cool. Of course, I had to actually travel to Africa in the early 1990's so that decades later I could relate my personal experiences with a few of the Europeans that brought beekeeping to certain regions there, and I can't link to that, really. 

And yeah, thebeegoddess.com is a cool site, but some of the information I found there was not attributed to anyone (horror!) and some of it they even _copied and pasted_ from other sources. And they don't give proper photo credits for some of their images. Hey Wayne, go deal with those pretenders and their "expertise."



WLC said:


> You mean 'Honeybees'.


Nope, I meant "honey bees." I see that it is proper to type it as either one word or two, so I do both. Of course, I got that from Wikipedia, so I better link to it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honey_bee



WLC said:


> Of course the Mayans kept bees that produced honey. They still do.


For one thing, some entomologists don't consider them true honey bees. For another thing, by "here" I meant North America, which is what this thread was originally about. I have never considered the Yucatan Peninsula to be "here," and I hope I never do.


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## WLC

Honeybees is the common name for Apis species. 'honey bees' means pretty much any bees that produce honey (like stingless bees). Tuhmaytoes. Tohmahtoes. 

There are two main continents that make up the Americas: North and South. Mexico is part of North America. That explains why we see so much of them. We're neighbors. 

Like I've said before: 'New Spain' is in resurgence here in many parts of the U.S. . In fact, they never left. They didn't want to hurt our sensitive '******' feelings by saying otherwise. 

Finally, it makes it alot easier for bees to swarm up north from the Yucatan since it's all connected.


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## byron

WLC said:


> Honeybees is the common name for Apis species.


No sir. Apis is not a species, Apis is a genus. There are many species of true honey bees, and there are many species of stingless bees, but true honey bees are in the genus Apis, while the stingless bees of the Mayans are in the genus Melipona. Huge distinction. Mayan stingless bees are not honeybees.



WLC said:


> * 'honey bees' means pretty much any bees that produce honey* (like stingless bees).


No sir. Lots of bees produce honey. Wasps, hornets, bumblebees, they are all honey producers, do we call them honeybees? 

Ever heard of the Mexican Honey Wasps? 
*Mexican Honey Wasps*
*Life History: Evans & Eberhard (1970):*

"Perhaps the most famous of the honey-storing wasps are those of the genus Brachygastra (formerly called Nectarina). In Brazil the honey of Brachygastra lecheguana is gathered from large nests, usually during the Brazilian summer. If the base of the nest is left on the branch, the inhabitants rebuild it in the same place, and the colony can be exploited again the next year. In Mexico the honey of B. lecheguana has commercial value. Wasp farmers-they could properly be called "vespiculturists"-gather young nests and transplant them to places where they can be protected, then periodically oust the inhabitants from the nest with smoke, destroy the nest to obtain the honey, and allow the wasps to return and rebuild the colony. 
*Hogue (1993):
*
The nectar-storing habits of wasps have been perfected by Brachygastra. Their nests contain large stores of a very palatable honey that is widely exploited by humans (Bequaert, 
1993). Numerous early accounts discuss the use of honey by the Indians of Mexico and Brazil and leave no doubt about the identity of the insect because of its characteristic nest, which is quite distinct from the nests of stingless bees, the only other common source of native honey in early days. In some areas (e.g. Jalisco), the honey is gathered regularly and even sold on the market. It is strongly scented and said to crystallize more rapidly than bees' honey. Some Indians keep 
the nests, cutting them when they are small and carrying them to their gardens. The source of the honey is flower nectar gathered by the wasps in bee fashion. When Datura or other toxic blooms are available, the honey may be tainted, and cases of poisoning are not rare. 
---------------
Here are a few other quotes:

Although some "stingless" bees are robbed of their honey in tropical regions, bees of the *genus Apis, the true honey bees*, are the major producers of honey and other hive products. 
Apis mellifera, the western hive bee, has been introduced into most regions of the world for use in beekeeping. http://www.beekeeping.com/articles/us/small_be ekeeping/bee_basics.htm
---------
Conquering Spaniards found that the natives of Mexico and Central America had already developed beekeeping. A distinct family of *stingless bees (not true honey bees)* was native to these regions. https://www.jorgensensapiary.com/trivia- about-honey.html

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In general when we say honey bees, normally we are referring specifically to the Western Hive bees (Apis mellifera L). In a strict sense this is not correct, honey bees are actually a genus (Apis) and are consisted of several different species. [And stingless bees are not one of the species of the apis genus.]
http://www.cyberbee.net/biology/ch1/






WLC said:


> There are two main continents that make up the Americas: North and South. Mexico is part of North America. That explains why we see so much of them. We're neighbors.


Haha, Canada is our neighbor, too, and I don't see 20 million Canadians sneaking in here to suck up all the free goodies. Yeah, we are seeing a lot of illegals here, but only because we haven't decided to shoo them away yet. 

But anyway, I am aware that the Y.P. involves part of Mexico. But when referring to Mayan bees, I was meaning the Guatemalan part of the Yucatan Peninsula, since that is, I believe, the lowland area where the Mayan stingless bees could survive, and Guatemala is not part of North America.




WLC said:


> Finally, it makes it a lot easier for bees to swarm up north from the Yucatan since it's all connected.


But you have to remember, the continental U.S. is connected too, and the bees still couldn't cross deserts and mountains, which is why people had to take them to California. 




WLC said:


> Like I've said before: 'New Spain' is in resurgence here in many parts of the U.S.


Yes, you've said that before. Maybe someone else knows what you are referring to. New Spain is in resurgence in modern day America? What am I missing? You might have to spell that one out for me.

But anyway, no, Mayan stingless bees are not in the genus Apis, they are not honeybees. So when a person says that, "Europeans brought honeybees to the Western Hemisphere," that is correct. People might say the Mayans had stingless bees and stole some honey from them, and for simplicity's sake you can nod and say, "sure," but now you know, they ain't honey bees. Not anymore than wasps, hornets, bumblebees or countless other things that produce honey.


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## WLC

Like I said, Honeybees refer to Apis species. Like Apis mellifera, Apis ceranae. Notice that I always write it as Honeybees, and not honeybees or honey bees. It's a proper name.

When you write honey bee, it's any bee (not a wasp or a bumble bee [note the seperation and lack of capitalization] that makes honey. This includes Apis species and stingless bees.

However, I'm not a grammar cop. No warning, or ticketing.

New Spain is in resurgence. Yes, it really and truly is. It never left. Not really. How's your Spanish?

I wouldn't say that it's impossible for Honeybees to cross the deserts and mountains of the southwest. They just need a few wet years to do so.


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## sqkcrk

Just to get in on the argument, wasps and hornets aren't bees. And, especially not honey bees. Hymenopterous insects, but not bees. That's the common Class, isn't it? Or is that the Order? Sometimes I think I have forgotten more than I ever knew.


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## hpm08161947

sqkcrk said:


> JThat's the common Class, isn't it? Or is that the Order? Sometimes I think I have forgotten more than I ever knew.


Lets see.. King Phillip Came Over From Germany Swiftly. Think maybe its Family.... but I've forgotten all that stuff too.


Wiki says I am wrong.... Order is correct.


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## byron

WLC said:


> Notice that I always write it as Honeybees, and not honeybees or honey bees.


 I did notice. I wouldn't have corrected you if you hadn't tried to correct me, but if you insist, I have to point out that the way you do it is incorrect. See below.


WLC said:


> It's a proper name.


No, it isn't. See below.



WLC said:


> When you write honey bee, it's any bee that makes honey. This includes Apis species and stingless bees.


Please tell us your source for this, as it is not accepted by any scientists or experts I know of. See below.



WLC said:


> However, I'm not a grammar cop.


No. No, you certainly are not.



WLC said:


> I wouldn't say that it's impossible for Honeybees to cross the deserts and mountains of the southwest. They just need a few wet years to do so.


Absolutely. Give it a million years or so. Currently deserts don't tend to get many "wet years." Or else we'd have to stop calling them deserts. I'm not sure how a few wet years helps bees across the mountains that they can't cross. Does the rain eventually wear the mountains down a few thousand feet?

Bumblebees are in the family Apidae, making them bees. Wasps and hornets are not bees.

To be a bee, it needs to be in the family Apidae, to be a true honey bee, it has to be in the genus Apis. 

The Mayan stingless bees are in the family Apidae, making them bees, but in the genus Melipona (not Apis), making them not a honey bee. The stingless are not referred to as Apis anything, so they are not honey bees.


All of this one word, two word stuff is not anything I can find anybody agreeing with you on. Honey bee can be capitalized if it's the first two words of a sentence, but otherwise, I can find nobody agreeing with you that it's a proper name that requires capitalization.
You seem to be the only person following your rules.

Shall we see what the experts say?

Cliff Van Eaton, New Zealand Beekeeper consultant, "And now for a moment of beeeeeeees," BoingBoing (blog), 15 September 2006 (Accessed 2 March 2008).
*"A well-trained honey bee scientist wouldn't spell the name "honeybee*", even though you'll find it mistakenly spelled this way in a number of dictionaries (as well as on the MS spell checker), and even in Wikipedia. The biological convention is that the name of an insect is separated into two words when the insect is what the name implies. So "honey bee" is separated into two words, since its a bee that "collects" honey, whereas "butterfly" is one word since it isn't a fly that produces butter."

"Honey Bee, How to Spell," in The ABC & XYZ of Bee Culture, ed. Dr. H. Shimanuki, Kim Flottum and Ann 
Harmon (Medina, OH: The A.I. Root Company, 2007), p332 — "Since the *honey bee* is a true bee,* two words are used*."

Fruitless Fall by Rowan Jacobsen, 1st ed., 2008.
From the Author's Note, "Copyeditors of the world beware. The spelling of insect names in this book follows the rules of the Entomology Society of America, not Merriam-Webster's. When a species is a true example of a particular taxon, that taxon is written separately. Honey bees and bumble bees are true bees, and black flies are true flies. A yellowjacket, however is not a true jacket.* Entomologists, who have to read the names of bugs a lot more than the rest of us do, would appreciate it if we all followed these rules*."

Entomologists use the two-word naming convention "honey bee" as established by the Entomological Society of America.


So can we agree that honey bee is spelled with two words, no capitalization necessary, as per the scientists and experts?

Can we agree that Mayan stingless bees are not in the genus Apis and therefore are not what entomologists define as a true honey bee?

If so, I would like to repeat from above, that, "Europeans brought honey bees to the Western Hemisphere."


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## WLC

byron:

You're gonna love this...

http://nature.berkeley.edu/~sramirez/Publications_files/Melipona DOI.pdf

All I did was search for 'phlogeny apis'.

byron, I ID wildlife. I know when it's important to differentiate between a proper name for a type of organism, like Honeybee, and when it's best to use a more general term, like honey bees.

Those stingless bees used by natives for honey production ARE 'honey bees'. However, they aren't 'Honeybees' like Apis species that are commonly used to produce honey.

Nevertheless, you can see how they are all related.


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## sqkcrk

byron said:


> Wasps and hornets are not bees.


Where did I read that before?


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## byron

WLC, you ain't gonna love this:

http://www.entsoc.org
Common Name: honey bee (two words, no capitalization)
Scientific Name: Apis mellifera Linnaeus 
Order: HYMENOPTERA	
Family: Apidae 
Genus: Apis 
Species: mellifera 
Author: Linnaeus


http://www.sac-be.com/mayan_bee.shtml
What is meliponiculture?
The Maya bees (or stingless bees), live in the planet's tropical regions, In Mexico they can be located mostly in the southeast area, in the Yucatán Peninsula. Their scientific name is Melipona becheii benetth, and they belong to the family Apidae. 

See, messing around with stingless junk is called meliponiculture instead of apiculture because "stingless bees" are in a completely different genus than honey bees. I mean, I can type it slower, but I just can't spell it out any simpler. 

Of course, Carl Linnaeus didn't just give Latin names to all the plants and animals, did you know he also named the human races?

Linnaeus, Carl. Systema Naturae (1767), p. 29 Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778), the physician, botanist, and zoologist, who established the taxonomic bases of binomial nomenclature for 
fauna and flora, was a pioneer researcher in biologically defining human races. In Systema Naturae (1767), he established human-race taxa: (i) the Americanus, (ii) the Asiaticus, (iii) the Africanus, (iv) the Europeanus, based upon geographic origin and skin color. 

Each race possessed innate physiognomic characteristics: the *Americanus* were red-skinned, of stubborn character, and angered easily; the *Africanus* were black-skinned, relaxed, and of negligent character; the *Asiaticus* race were yellow-skinned, 
avaricious, and easily distracted; whereas, unlike the character-imbalanced colored people, the *Europeanus* were white-skinned, of gentle character, inventive mind, and bellicose.


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## byron

sqkcrk said:


> Where did I read that before?


Yes, of course I was responding to your post....sorry I didn't quote you specifically, I just rolled it all into one post. In any case, I hadn't said that they were bees, I don't think, I was making the larger point that lots of stuff technically produces honey (including ants) that we don't call honey bees.


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## WLC

Funny thing is that I've noticed most scientists will use the term honey bee, and then Apis mellifera from then on, or just bee. They're not too concerned once they name the genus and species.

However, it's a mistake for them not to be specific about the subspecies. That's a big boo-boo (the scientific term for a mistake). I'm not surprised that they wouldn't use the proper name either. For example: Apis mellifera mellifera, the Honeybee. That's the right way to do it.

Bees include alot more than Apis species. They're just 'bees' unless you get specific.


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## Alex Wild

A further observation liable to confuse matters:

Americans tend to use "Honey Bee" (2 words) for the species _Apis mellifera_, while Brits write "Honeybee" as a single word. Thus, you'll see it in both forms depending on the source country.

The American usage is consistent with the broader pattern whereby if the common name refers to the correct taxonomic category the name is listed as two words (Apis is a true bee so it is written Honey Bee; a horse fly is a true fly. But a firefly- one word- is actually a beetle).

As both variants are common names and hence unregulated by formal taxonomic rules, I don't think either Honey Bee or Honeybee should be considered as the single correct spelling. If you want to be precise, use the formal taxonomic language. That's why it exists.


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## WLC

Alex:

That's a good point. However, the fact remains: even scientists fail to identify the 'strain' in their published work. They just say Apis mellifera. They almost never say Apis mellifera ligustica. etc. .

I think that beekeepers can understand that there's a big difference between the different strains of Honeybee that they use. Scientists seem to consistently drop the ball on the proper name Honeybee (or Honey bee, if you must), as well as the correct strain ID.

I've specifically obtained VSH Italians for this reason. I know better. You've got to know which specific strain you're studying. Or, it's like trying to stand on a three legged stool that's had one leg sawed off.

Unfortunately, the practice still continues in the published literature.


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## byron

WLC said:


> I'm not surprised that they wouldn't use the proper name either.


Oh, well hell, if you are going to say the scientists and experts that designed the very naming convention don't know what they are doing, no wonder you think I'm stupid, too. I guess we all stand corrected by WLC, the guy on the bee forum. 



WLC said:


> Bees include alot [sic]more than Apis species. They're just 'bees' unless you get specific.


Um, yeah. Apidae makes them bees, Apis makes them honey bees. Mayan stingless bees aren't Apis anything, that's why entomologists say they aren't honey bees. But what do they know?




WLC said:


> byron:
> 
> You're gonna love this...
> 
> http://nature.berkeley.edu/~sramirez/Publications_files/Melipona DOI.pdf


Yeah, it was great. It didn't do a thing to support any of your claims, in fact it kind of wrecked everything you are saying. Here's a good one:
_*Similar to honey bees (Apis), Melipona are remarkable for insects, in their ability to recruit nest mates to specific foraging sites (von Frisch, 1967; Michener, 1974; Dyer, 2002; Nieh, 2004).*_ 
Dude, like your own source just threw your theory under the bus twice. It referred to honey bees (two words, no capitalization) as Apis. If it isn't Apis, it isn't honey bees, according to your own source, and Mayan stingless ain't Apis. 






WLC said:


> I know when it's important to differentiate between a proper name for a type of organism, like Honeybee, and when it's best to use a more general term, like honey bees.


But I read your own linked source, and it pretty much spelled it "honey bee," two words no capitalization, every single time unless it was the beginning of a sentence or a title heading or something, then correct grammar requires capitalization (that's the scientific term for the big letters.)

I think the point of providing links to sources when you are trying to fuss at someone is to have your sources actually back up _your_ position, not mine. 

Maybe you need better sources?


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## WLC

byron:

It's WLC, the guy DNA barcoding and DNA fingerprinting bees.

Some of us aren't just 'guys on the forum'.

You need a proper name and strain ID when working with certain organisms, especially livestock.

You can go on calling them bees. I'll know what you mean.


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## Ted Kretschmann

Byron, why do you call bees in the order of Melapona Junk??? There are more species of them then you can ever count!! The Aztecs and Mayans developed a rich beekeeping culture based on them. Junk they are not. Not well understood, yes, maybe. TK


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## byron

Alex Wild said:


> If you want to be precise, use the formal taxonomic language. That's why it exists.


Yeah, but if we tried it that Greek guy will scream that it was Greek before it was Latin, I'll be dumb enough to point out that it was probably Minoan before it was Greek, Mr. Garden will scold me for copy/pasting on a message board, Squeaky will re-state the obvious, W. will tell us that the people who did the naming were wrong, and M.B. will still ignore the thread because he's sad that Amerinds weren't doing the Sacred Honey Bee dance since the beginning of time like he thought.


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## WLC

Ted:

I noticed the large number of Melipona too. Wow! Byron didn't find it interesting though.


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## Alex Wild

I'm with the scientists on this one (disclaimer: I'm one myself; my degree is in taxonomy, although in ants rather than bees), for the simple reason that "strains" are more complex than the bee industry makes them out to be.

_Apis mellifera ligustica_ Spinola was named from native European populations of honey bees. Queens sold as "Italians" on our continent contain some alleles from those regions, but genomic research shows basically all the varieties we have in North America are mutts. This is not surprising. They're all the same species, they mostly open mate, and we truck bees in massive quantities all over the continent so we don't get any regional differentiation. What bee breeders sell as "Italian" or "Carniolan", or whatever, are most certainly not the same entities as those originally named. It's a mess, and scientists would do well to avoid over-precision in naming.

You raise a good point that, in the face of great variability in the species, scientists don't often report on the particulars of their study colonies. But our current "strains" are just an illusion, and they aren't the same thing as exist in the native range. The best solution from a science communication standpoint is to leave genetic voucher specimens so that others can verify the genetic makeup of the animals independently if need be.


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## byron

Ted Kretschmann said:


> Byron, why do you call bees in the order of Melapona Junk??? There are more species of them then you can ever count!! The Aztecs and Mayans developed a rich beekeeping culture based on them. Junk they are not. Not well understood, yes, maybe. TK


You mean the genus Melapona? The order is Hymenoptera, according to the scientific experts, who we are learning don't know anything, apparently. 

There are 33 species of melipona left in Guatemala, you know, where the Mayans used to be. I can count to 33. 

They are tiny, can't survive in most climates, produce miniscule amounts of honey that tastes like crap, apparently. The queens can't fly so when the natives slash and burn everything, the colonies perish, they are going extinct for a number of reasons. I wouldn't keep them, and neither would you, if you were a smart Guatemalan beekeeper....that's why they are switching to Africanized as fast as they can. If they think their own native bees are junk, why would some starry-eyed American want to sing their praises? 

Maybe the ancient Aztecs and Mayans worshipped stingless honey back then, but they worshipped us, too, didn't they? That didn't work out too well for them either.


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## Alex Wild

I kept both Africanized _Apis _and _Tetragonisca _stingless bees in Paraguay for several years. It's apples and oranges. 

Stingless bees produce much less honey of a rather different quality, it's true. But the street value where I lived was 3x that of _Apis _honey as the locals considered it to be more "medicinal." It's a different product with a different market. And, _Tetragonisca _are just about zero work to maintain. They are waaaayyy easier than _Apis_. You just open the box now and then and pull out the honey. I wouldn't do mass production with them like some do with _Apis_, but meliponiculture was a great sideline for a small family farm.


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## byron

WLC said:


> It's WLC, the guy DNA barcoding and DNA fingerprinting bees.
> Some of us aren't just 'guys on the forum'.


Hey, it's the internet, people can be whatever they want to be. They can have Super Twin Powers online if they want to say so, even if in real life they are some teacher's assistant's assistant. Whatever. I judge people based on the evidence and facts they can bring to bear in a discussion, not what they say their professional position is somewhere else. 

When I see people completely ignoring and refusing to address voluminous amounts of information that contradict their positions, I don't see science. I see an emotion-driven unwillingness to admit being wrong.

You wanted me to change my spelling of "honey bee" to "Honeybee," saying that it's a proper name. I don't mind admitting that all of my sources are wrong if you can provide better ones supporting your claim.

Everything I can find (and presented in this thread since you brought it up) says that if it isn't Apis, it isn't a Honeybee. Can you tell us of a good source of science claiming that this isn't so?

So far your best source didn't agree with either your spelling or your definition of honey bees.

I'm not saying you are dumb or anything, I'm sure you are brilliant. In fact, when I told Dr. Tammy Horn that you were concluding that she was ethnically biased and did shoddy research on her book _*Bees in America, *_ by not including enough evidence of Hispanic beekeeping, she said there was always room for more books and that maybe you would consider writing one yourself. So she thinks you are a smart feller, too.


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## WLC

Alex:

I've downloaded the reference that you've linked to on my desktop. I'll give it a second going over. However, I'm interpretting it differently than 'they're all mutts'. Africanization seems to be the main point after an initial glance. It was written before the findings of the Honeybee genome project were published, or so it seems.

I think that it's great that you had a chance to work with stingless honey bees.

I'm focusing on COI (mitochondrial) sequences and denovo, retrotransposed sequences.


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## byron

Alex Wild said:


> I kept both Africanized _Apis _and _Tetragonisca _stingless bees in Paraguay for several years.
> ...the street value where I lived was 3x that of _Apis _honey as the locals considered it to be more "medicinal." It's a different product with a different market. And, _Tetragonisca _are just about zero work to maintain. You just open the box now and then and pull out the honey. I wouldn't do mass production with them like some do with _Apis_, but meliponiculture was a great sideline for a small family farm.


Very interesting. Am I reading the wrong stuff that says that the number of people wanting to engage in keeping stingless bees, as opposed to honey bees, are dwindling rapidly, and that people there would rather keep AHB?


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## Alex Wild

WLC:

Do give it a read- it's a great paper, one of my favs. 

The bees Whitfield et al sampled in the U.S. are running about 20% _A. mellifera mellifera_ alleles. Thus, the "Italian" bees here are likely part _A. mellifera mellifera_. What I found particularly fascinating was that the process of Africanization is a near-complete purging of ligustica/carnica alleles while leaving the mellifera component intact. Thus, pre-Africanization we had ligustica/mellifera mutts, and post-Africanization is scutellata/mellifera mutts. 

In any case, there's been a lot of admixture.


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## WLC

byron:

It's Honeybee. If you don't want to call Apis mellifera. or any other honey producing Apis species a Honeybee, fine by me.

Tammy Horn wrote a fine book. But, she left out New Spain. Too bad.

Oh, I almost forgot. If you don't want to call stingless bees, honey bees or stingless honey bees, no big deal.

I think that this has gone more than a bit off topic.


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## Alex Wild

byron said:


> Very interesting. Am I reading the wrong stuff that says that the number of people wanting to engage in keeping stingless bees, as opposed to honey bees, are dwindling rapidly, and that people there would rather keep AHB?


I can't speak for Central America, but there was some interest where I was in South America, at least among small farmers. For larger-scale commercial beekeeping, certainly there will be more interest in _Apis_. That species scales well for industrial production.

The other issue is habitat destruction. I hate to say it, but _Apis mellifera_ is a rat among pollinators. It tolerates a fair amount of habitat destruction and works monocultures and the imported crop plants more effectively than most other bees. As the native forests are felled in the tropics, the local bees become less productive and the imported bees step up.

added in edit: I should note, that last bit is just opinion based on personal observation. I am not aware of any published evidence that this is the case.


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## Ted Kretschmann

Yes, Byron I meant Genus. O.K> I work 2000 colonies of honeybees-genus APIS in 95+ heat producing honey for Souix. Several hundred colonies are examined in a day. How many colonies do you work of the genus Apis? So I am a little "cooked" when I sit down infront of a computer screen to type replies to somebody that still has not given an exact date of when bees arrived in America. Yes, inquiring minds would like to know! Not withstanding the possible importation by the Vikings, it would reason that they were brought into the Island of Hispanola first by Catholic Jesuit Priest, Under the governorship of Columbus, to supply beeswax for the newly constructed churches congregated by newly converted christian indians.... And Oh yes, Byron, I find you a little bit ethinically prejudiced in your opinions also. You should take those opinions into the tailgater section of the forum. TK


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## byron

WLC said:


> It's Honeybee. If you don't want to call Apis mellifera. or any other honey producing Apis species a Honeybee, fine by me.


 Who says it's "Honeybee"? Who? Besides you, who? I _want_ to call them Honeybees, especially after you were compelled to correct my use of "honey bee." I really want to. Please tell me who says it's a proper name and needs to be one word, capitalized. Since you insist that it is correct, I am humbly requesting a source. My god, I have given you links to multiple entomological and other organizations that disagree with you. The very link you gave me disagreed with you. I just want you to tell us why you think it is what you want it to be. 

Ever heard of the Honey Bee Genome Project?
http://www.hgsc.bcm.tmc.edu/project-species-i-Apis%20mellifera.hgsc?pageLocation=Apis%20mellifera
Look at the first sentence:

*The HGSC has sequenced the honey bee, Apis mellifera.*
The honey bee. Two words, not capitalized. Are they wrong, too?

To just claim one is right and that's that is the most unscientific thing I can think of. Come on, you can do better.






WLC said:


> Oh, I almost forgot. If you don't want to call stingless bees, honey bees or stingless honey bees, no big deal.


It's not what I want to call them that matters. You need to understand that, while laymen might refer to them as stingless honey bees, entomologists don't. I'm contending, after my research was prompted by your attempted correction of me, that everything I can find says that only Apis are true honey bees, and Mayan stingless are not of the genus Apis. It's really not complicated. Can you or can you not provide anything saying otherwise?


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## byron

Ted Kretschmann said:


> Yes, Byron I meant Genus. O.K> I work 2000 colonies of honeybees-genus APIS in 95+ heat producing honey for Souix. [sic]


Hey, calm down brother, I wasn't insulting you at all. I mean, you said there were more species of Melapona than I could count. Actually, according to Wiki there are only 13 species of that Genus that produce honey, and I think I can count to 13. I gave you my opinion of why I think those bees are junk, and a lot of the natives down there think so, too. I think poodles are junk dogs, also, but I'm sure dog lovers disagree. Why any of this was taken personally by you is beyond me. Maybe you should keep the stingless, it sounds like you'd have an easier day of it. 
But I'm sorry I corrected you, I thought you'd want to know so you could be right in the future. I promise I'll never correct another single thing you do ever again. OK, you spelled Sioux wrong, but _that's_ the last time I'll correct anything from you. Never again. Oi vey.



Ted Kretschmann said:


> ... still has not given an exact date of when bees arrived in America. Yes, inquiring minds would like to know!


 That has been covered pretty exhaustively here, I mean, are you kidding? If we go by the written documentation, yes, we know when they were brought here and how long it took to reach the West Coast. 
Now, WLC theorized that honey bees from Europe might have been brought to "New Spain" and migrated north before the English brought bees to America, but I don't think there has been documentation of that, although we spent a bit of time looking. Enquiring minds are welcome to read the whole thread.



Ted Kretschmann said:


> ...exact date of when bees arrived in* America*.... they were brought into the Island of Hispanola first by Catholic Jesuit Priest...


Oh, so you knew the answer this whole time? You rascal.  I have learned so much in this thread. I have learned that entomologists and other scientists don't know as much as some guy on this forum, that all the language experts I can find are stupid, now we learn that historians don't know stuff, and apparently neither do geographers, because apparently the island of "Hispanola" [sic] is part of America! I bet the inhabitants of the two nations that make up the island of Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic) can't wait to hear the great news that they are citizens of the United States!
Breaking international news right here on beesource.com. I knew I'd learn something here.


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## byron

Alex Wild said:


> The other issue is habitat destruction. As the native forests are felled in the tropics, the local bees become less productive and the imported bees step up.
> 
> added in edit: I should note, that last bit is just opinion based on personal observation.


Interesting. I trust your personal observations, by the way. I enjoy studying invasive exotics as well, or invasive species if that's more correct. Some work out well, depending on how you look at it, and some are disastrous, depending on how you look at it. Kind of like how Michael Bush answers so many questions by starting with, "It depends...." Like, technically, sugar cane was an invasive species brought to the new world by Europeans. Some rich Cubans are cool with that, but it had to have displaced many native things. When aborigines went to Australia, they were an invasive species and extincted hundreds of native species. Many large species that were easily hunted were extincted by Amerinds in the U.S. when they (Amerinds) first came here. When the English came to America, they found that their fox hunts were spoiled by the fact that native gray foxes could climb trees, so the English had to import red foxes that were unable to escape the hounds vertically. And yes, I guess our honey bees are an invasive species also, as well as the AHB. 

I guess one man's invasive species is another man's valued import. I find it hard to make moral judgements about that. We would all like to cherry pick our own list of invasives we would gladly wave a wand and get rid of, but I doubt we could all agree on the same list.


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## byron

Alex Wild said:


> I kept _Tetragonisca _stingless bees in Paraguay for several years. It's apples and oranges.


Hmmm, but those aren't Melipona, are they? They are stingless, but not the same species as what the Mayans are believed to have had? Or am I mistaken? If they aren't the same species, are they similar or very different? It seems like the stingless honey is a specialty item, and supply and demand make it valuable just because it is scarce, as well as the native population being ethnically biased towards their own honey. But the very reason for it's scarcity make it, like you said, unrealistic to even think of doing on a large scale. 

From Wiki:
*As stingless bees are harmless to humans, they have become an increasingly attractive addition to the suburban backyard. Most meliponine beekeepers do not keep the bees for honey but rather for the pleasure of conserving a native species whose original habitat is declining due to human development.*

Looks like stingless bees are just becoming a suburban novelty down under.


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## WLC

O.K. Byron. Since it still perplexes you.

Livestock typically carries a proper name for their breed. If you get your queens from a breeder, they are Honeybees of a particular type. They are not simply honey bees. Scientists typically use the generic term 'honey bees' followed by a genus and species name. That's their convention.

Unfortunately, unless they're getting bees from the wild, it's improper. They didn't identify the stock they were using. What's worse is that they often fail to identify the subspecies.

The Whitfield paper that Alex cited starts with the generic honey bees/Apis mellifera appelation. But, it then describes specific subspecies by name. That's the right way to do things. We know exactly which strains of bees they were working with.

While that paper goes one to say that different markers of different origins are being displaced, it still doesn't affect how livestock/stock is named.

So, as long as Honeybee queen breeders are producing specific strains/stock, then Honeybee will always be a proper name. Unless, of course, you have no clue where the bees came from. I wouldn't call feral bees 'Honeybees' proper for example. But, if I took a sample from someone's hives, you can bet I'd ask about the queen source. 

Scientists, like entomologists, won't always take the view that they're dealing with a particular stock when studying the Honeybee. Too many of them simply refer to bees as the honey bee, Apis mellifera. They have absolutely no respect for the Honeybee queen breeder. Tsk, tsk.


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## Ted Kretschmann

Bryon, Where did Columbus Land??? It was Where??? It sure was not mainland USA. And where were the first spanish colonies located at?? And last time I checked those islands were parts of the Americas. And thus Columbus discovered America according to grade school history books, but auctually using information handed down for several generations from his relative, Lord Sinclair. TK


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## lazy shooter

Ok already, there have been way too many disagreements on this thread. It appears that these harsh arguments can only be settled with a duel. Since there are more than two opponents in this thread, it will need to be a "modified" dueler's format. The best solution would be akin to a circular firing squad, where all contenders would be well armed with several pistols. At the command to fire, all contenders would fire at will until only one person remained standing. This person would win the right to write the final, indisputable comment on this thread.


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## byron

lazy shooter said:


> This person would win the right to write the final, indisputable comment on this thread.


What fun would that be? This is the best thread on this board. I want it stickied.


----------



## byron

Ted Kretschmann said:


> Where did Columbus Land??? It was Where??? It sure was not mainland USA. And where were the first spanish colonies located at?? And last time I checked those islands were parts of the Americas.


 I believe you are absolutely, 100% correct. And it has nothing to do with anything I said. When I say "America," I mean the same thing everybody else does. The U.S.A. Neither Columbus nor any Spanish settlers first brought honey bees to America, and nobody suggested that they did. "The Americas," sure, North, Central and South, we all know that, I hope. Haiti and the Dominican Republic are not in America, sir.



Ted Kretschmann said:


> And thus Columbus discovered America according to grade school history books, but auctually using information handed down for several generations from his relative, Lord Sinclair. TK


I'm not responsible for children's mistaken schoolbooks, sir. I'd burn most of them, trust me. I know Columbus didn't discover anything. James Joyce once said, *"Christopher Columbus, as everyone knows, is honored by posterity because he was the last to discover America."*

By the way, I'm glad you seem to be aware of something most folks are not: That Columbus actually had a map to the new world. One of the best books you can pick up on the subject is called _Maps of the ancient sea kings: evidence of advanced civilization in the ice age. _

Really, it's a few bucks at Amazon.com and it will blow your mind. Impeccably researched, the stuff in that book seems incredible at first, but everything is surrounded by a thick wall of unimpeachable evidence, and it kind of leaves you with no logical choice but to concur.


----------



## byron

WLC said:


> Scientists, like entomologists, won't always take the view that they're dealing with a particular stock when studying the Honeybee. Too many of them simply refer to bees as the honey bee, Apis mellifera.


So, like, does that mean you can't cite a single source backing up your claim? That's all I was asking for. Because I looked, I really did. And if it bugs you that nobody, including scientists and entomologists, agree with you, then you must be unhappy a lot of time, especially here on this board, because I can't find anybody that agrees with you. So you just had to tell me that I, and everybody else, am wrong to use, "honey bee," but you can't provide us with a link that it must be, "Honeybee." Are you serious? All you can say is that the experts are wrong, and that's that? Yeah, that is perplexing. Unscientific.

And you very consistently refuse to address the fact that, contrary to your insistence, Mayan stingless bees are not in the genus _Apis_ and that is why no scientist or entomologist define them as true honey bees. Why won't you address that, since you repeatedly bring it up and insist otherwise? Trying to escape by saying, "Oh, go ahead and call them what you want, I don't care," won't cut it with adults. If you didn't care, you should have thought of that before making a public spectacle of yourself by saying that all of the experts are wrong because they disagree with you. 

I'm not being rude and this isn't a personality clash, I want to be properly informed here, and apparently a few hundred folks follow this thread everyday, so this is a great chance for you to correct all of us at the same time, saving you valuable time in the future.


----------



## WLC

byron:

I don't think that you'll have any trouble at all finding a research article on Honeybees were they are simply referred to as 'honey bees/Apis mellifera'. There's no reference to the 'stock' or to the subspecies. That could make reproducing the study more difficult than it needs to be.

When you say 'honey bee', it also applies to non Apis species as well like Melipona and Trigona. They are all Apidae. The Melipona and Trigona are New World honey bees. They are used to produce (need I say this?) honey. Brand refers to all of them as honey bees. He refers to the Spanish or European bee/Apis mellifera (mellifera) Linnaeus. Which is a proper name, and he has identified the subspecies as well.

So in a thread where we are discussing Honeybees of european origin as well as stingless bees from the New World, pardon me if it becomes difficult to understand which bees you mean.

As for how livestock are named, pardon me if I disagree with all of the scientific references that you can find (trust me, I've seen alot more than you, and they still usually flub the proper name and subspecies). 

You need to refer to how a breed of livestock is named (that's not in some scientific paper). It's always a proper name. Whether you call it a Honeybee or a Buckfast honey bee.

I'm glad to have enlightened you on the naming of stock.


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## byron

WLC said:


> When you say 'honey bee', it also applies to non Apis species as well like Melipona and Trigona. They are all Apidae. The Melipona and Trigona are New World honey bees. They are used to produce (need I say this?) honey.


No ma'am. Not a single entomologist I can find agrees with your first sentence. None. Get it? None. Not. A. Single. One. Only members of genus _Apis_ are true honey bees. Melipona and Trigona are members of family _Apidae_ and yes, they produce honey. So do bumblebees, which are also members of family _Apidae,_ which, by definition, defines them as bees. However, none of these three are members of genus _Apis_ which means that, by the scientific definition you refuse to accept, makes them not true honey bees. Everybody but you seems to understand this. Are you just pretending not to understand this?





WLC said:


> So in a thread where we are discussing Honeybees of european origin as well as stingless bees from the New World, pardon me if it becomes difficult to understand which bees you mean.


It's absurdly simple to understand, actually. When I say (and the point of the whole thread) "Europeans brought honey bees to America," I mean, you know, the European honey bees from .........Europe. Did you honestly think anyone meant that we went to Central America, kidnapped some stingless junk, and then brought them to America where they would have died instantly? No, we all understand that European honey bees were brought here by Europeans, from Europe. 

And Brand, your hero, refers to European honey bees as "honey bees," two words, no capitalization. Is he wrong, too?

*Why can't you link us to anyone besides yourself that insists that we need to spell it Honeybee, one word, capital H? *
You think I'm being mean, I'm not.


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## mrspock

All I can say about this thread:


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## WLC

'no ma'am'? :no:

Why would you ask entomologists about Honeybee breeds? They're just 'Apis mellifera' to most of them. Besides, they have editors and peer reviewers who know even less about Honeybees than they do. They have to follow a style format.

Apis species, Melipona, and Trigona are honey bees when used to produce honey by people. That's not debatable.

(I'm not aware of anyone using bumble bees (Bombus, etc.) for producing honey.)

Only Apis species are true Honeybees (of course I know this). Brand did use a proper name, European honey bee. He could have also said european Honeybee, european Honey Bee, etc. . It only needs an itty-bitty capital letter.

Just a reminder, this isn't a scientific symposium, however, you do need to be clear on which breeds you are referring to. Especially when we are discussing Apis, Melipona, and Trigona species in the same post.


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## byron

WLC said:


> 'no ma'am'? :no:


Sorry, I assumed from your style of making a point with no evidence that you......oh, never mind.



WLC said:


> Why would you ask entomologists about Honeybee breeds?


 Right, silly me. What do they know.



WLC said:


> Apis species, Melipona, and Trigona are honey bees when used to produce honey by people. That's not debatable.


Oh god. Are you saying that feral Melipona are not honey bees, since people don't use them? 



WLC said:


> (I'm not aware of anyone using bumble bees (Bombus, etc.) for producing honey.)


Me either. I said that they are bees that produce honey but are not in the genus _Apis_ and so therefore aren't defined as true honey bees, just like the Mayan junk bees.





WLC said:


> Just a reminder, this isn't a scientific symposium, however, you do need to be clear on which breeds you are referring to. Especially when we are discussing Apis, Melipona, and Trigona species in the same post.


 But I didn't need to be specific about breeds when I correctly stated that Europeans brought honey bees to America. We all got it.

So, we are getting closer, folks. We still can't get a link or any source for it, but we are getting closer.
Tell me, WLC, please, tell me who I can go to to verify your naming theory? If you won't do it, I'll do your research for you. If neither entomologists nor any other scientists know anything about how to name bees, please tell me what authority taught you the special way that you do it. Is there a society of namers of breeds of bees? *Who do you think has more credibility than the Entomological Society of America that developed the naming convention that I linked you to? *We can't seem to get a link or a source for your expertise, not even a copy/paste job, nuthin'. You don't even have to spell it out, give us the initials of the organization. What does it rhyme with? If you refuse to type it on your keyboard, give us Morse code, smoke signals, anything. 

I feel so sorry for what's left of your credibility, I am rooting for you, I want you to be right. I've given you plenty of opportunities to share the source of your knowledge. 

Of course, on that other thread, you said all someone had to do was write a book about something to be an expert, so the bar must be really low for you to accept something as fact. Just share it with us. Stop Bogarting the proof, man.


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## byron

mrspock said:


> All I can say about this thread:


Is your user name Mr. Spock or Mrs. Pock? I can't tell, and WLC has me all anal retentive about gender and naming schemes, I don't want to get it wrong.


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## Ravenseye

I would appreciate a bit more restraint in some of these posts please. Read twice, post once would be great. On topic helps as well!


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## mrspock

byron said:


> Is your user name Mr. Spock or Mrs. Pock? I can't tell, and WLC has me all anal retentive about gender and naming schemes, I don't want to get it wrong.


I'd tell you, but I'd be afraid you'd ask me for proof.


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## byron

WLC said:


> Apis species, Melipona, and Trigona *are honey bees when used to produce honey by people. That's not debatable.
> *


I just got off the phone with:

*Dr. Eric C. Mussen, Ph.D. 
Extension Apiculturist at the Harry H. Laidlaw 
Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility at UC Davis.*
Research Interests:
Managing honey bees and wild bees for maximum field production, while minimizing pesticide damage to pollinator populations.

I asked him if Mayan stingless bees are considered by anyone in any profession to be either true honey bees, Honeybees, Honey Bees, or any other kind of honey bees of any kind of spelling. He said, *"No. Those are stingless bees, some of whom produce honey. They are not honey bees, no matter how one might spell or capitalize them."*

He further told me that the Entomological Society of America developed a naming convention (Remember? I gave you the link to them.) that governs what we call these things in America, and the proper term for the common European honey bee, Apis Mellifera, was, in fact,* "honey bee." Two words, no capitalization unless it's in a title or whatever.*

I told him that you insist that the correct naming scheme must be "Honeybee," since it is a proper name for a breed, and that you said entomologists wouldn't be expected to know anything about bee breeds. He said,* "Good. That's his opinion, let him have it. He's wrong, but let him keep it. He's not going to change the world and you aren't going to change his mind."*

Also, he did mention the 14 million year old honey bee fossil found in Nevada, that belonged to a type of bee that went extinct long before Amerinds ever came here. I told him that you only consider something a honey bee if it is used by humans to produce honey, so technically 14 million years ago there were no humans, so by your definition that would not actually even be a honey bee.

After Dr. Mussen stopped laughing I thanked him for his time and ended the call.

Who can I contact that will agree with you?


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## WLC

You asked an entomologist how breeds of Honeybees are named?

:lpf:

'He further told me that the Entomological Society of America developed a naming convention (Remember? I gave you the link to them.) that governs what we call these things in America,...'



Entomologists don't name breeds of Honeybees.


Beekeepers and Queen breeders get that honor. 
:applause:

I think that he's confusing their conventions for taxonomic assignments and the naming of new species with how beekeepers name their strains/breeds. 

Of course, if I wanted to find the taxonomic assignment of a particular Honeybee queen, I would just take the COI sequence information and run a phylogenetic analysis. I don't need an entomologist for that.

But, I already know the strain/breed of my queens because thay came from a breeder. I don't need an entomologist for that either.

byron:

You contacted Tammy Horn and bugged her about New Spain.

Now, you contact Dr. Mussen and bugged him about naming breeds.

Who is next?

Sorry, but Melipona and Trigona are honey bees too (but not Honeybees). It's a matter of how they've been used by natives for thousands of years. I doubt that the folks using stingless bees for honey production have ever even heard of 'the Entomological Society of America' (Is that North or South?). It's not that important.


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## mrspock

byron said:


> After Dr. Mussen stopped laughing I thanked him for his time and ended the call.


Good god man - you wasted this man's time over an internet semantics fight?

Time to let go and live life a bit. Being right is a petty victory.


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## byron

WLC said:


> You asked an entomologist how breeds of Honeybees are named?


No. I asked Dr. Eric C. Mussen, Ph.D., Extension *Apiculturist
* at UC Davis if stingless bees, not being _Apis_, were considered honeybees, honey bees, or even Honey bees, and he said no. 




WLC said:


> I don't need an entomologist for that.


I know, I've been reading some of your other posts/threads, and you like saying you don't need biologists or entomologists for this or that. Must be nice.



WLC said:


> I doubt that the folks using stingless bees have ever even heard of 'the Entomological Society of America'


 Probably not. They never heard of toilet paper, either, until we gave it to them. So what? Are you implying that the Entomological Society of America isn't valid and doesn't know what a honey bee is because some people in the jungle don't know who they are? Interesting. 

Dr. Mussen said you won't change the world by being wrong and I won't change your mind by being right. He said he doesn't waste his time on people that can't accept facts or present any evidence to back their claims up. 

He's smarter than I am.


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## mrspock

byron said:


> He said he doesn't waste his time on people that can't accept facts or present any evidence to back their claims up.


He appears to have time for pedantic reductionists. 

C'mon dude... step back and go do something productive with your time.


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## byron

mrspock said:


> Good god man - you wasted this man's time over an internet semantics fight?


I have found that experts and scientists enjoy laymen who take the time to get things right. They take it seriously and tend to appreciate others who share their interests. Over the years I have had many fascinating conversations with ethnologists, historians, biologists, geneticists, various authors, etc.... I always thank them for their time, and they usually thank me for my interest in their work. They have told me that they often do the same thing, pick up the phone when they need answers, or shoot an e-mail off to someone. 

Remember, many of these folks are teachers, they enjoy giving answers, and they list their daytime phone numbers for the public for a reason.

Isn't there anything you don't know? Find out who does know, and reach out to them. It's not hard, and you will learn a lot. 

Why would you assume that any of these people felt that their time was wasted? How petty and presumptuous.


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## WLC

byron:

You do realize that this is exactly the same type of bias that came up before in the beginning of this thread.

Horn can't say that native Americans had no word for honey bees besides 'white man's fly' or 'English fly' because we've heard from speakers of Native American languages that they do in fact have a word for honey bee. She didn't even mention Brand's work on Honeybees in New Spain.

Similarly, a U.S. based organization, like the 'Entomological Society of America' can't tell native Americans south of the U.S. border that the honey bees they've kept for thousands of years aren't honey bees because 'they say so'.

That's the height of arrogance.

Don't forget that I've given you a link to a study containing a phylogenetic tree showing how Melipona (and Trigona) is related to Apis species. They're all Apidae. They're all bees, And, many of them are most certainly being kept by people for honey production. That alone makes them honey bees.

Sorry byron, but this goes beyond science.


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## Ted Kretschmann

The thread that should have been dead twelve pages back. TK


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## sqkcrk

Ted Kretschmann said:


> an exact date of when bees arrived in America. Yes, inquiring minds would like to know! TK


One answer to what inquiring minds would like to know is March of 1619. Arrival: Jamestown, Colony of Virginia. "By this ship and the Discovery...".


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## hpm08161947

sqkcrk said:


> March of 1619. Arrival: Jamestown, Colony of Virginia. "By this ship and the Discovery...".


Mark, do you have any information about how they were transported... (No pallets back then I suppose  ) I have a picture in my mind of Gum log hives in burlap bags periodically being doused with water. How long was the passage? Is there anything about how many they brought?

If nothing else - this Wild and Crazy thread has made me stop and think about such things.


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## sqkcrk

byron said:


> No. I asked Dr. Eric C. Mussen, Ph.D., Extension *Apiculturist
> 
> He's smarter than I am.*


*

Being an Extension Apiculturalist means having to answer questions bee related. Or should I have written "Apis related."?*


----------



## byron

WLC said:


> Horn can't say that native Americans had no word for honey bees besides 'white man's fly' or 'English fly' because we've heard from speakers of Native American languages that they do in fact have a word for honey bee.


Dude, she didn't say that. Nobody said thousands of different tribes "all" called them white man's flies. We've covered that. Some bees travelled ahead of white settlers and some Amerinds probably came up with their own names for honey bees long before they ever saw a white man. But, the reason some Indians called them white man's flies was because there were no honey bees in America before we brought them. 




WLC said:


> Similarly, a U.S. based organization, like the 'Entomological Society of America' can't tell native Americans south of the U.S. border that the honey bees they've kept for thousands of years aren't honey bees because 'they say so'.


Sure they can. Just like we had to break it to the Chinese that their Panda bears weren't really bears. They got over it. That's science. And I'm not aware of any "native Americans south of the U.S. border," are you? Are you now going to rename people as well as bees? Are you calling Mayans "native Americans," and Mayan stingless bees "honey bees," so that you can dispute the historical statement that, "Native Americans did not have honey bees."?



WLC said:


> Don't forget that I've given you a link to a study containing a phylogenetic tree showing how Melipona (and Trigona) is related to Apis species. They're all Apidae. They're all bees,


Thanks, but I wasn't waiting for you to tell me that they are all bees because they are Apidae. I've said repeatedly that science says family Apidae makes them bees, and genus Apis makes them honey bees. I understand that offends your sensibilities, but I'm a home brewer, and I just bite my tongue when someone refers to Budweiser as "beer," so I understand where you are coming from. You might also think it's silly that we drive on a parkway and park on a driveway, but there ya go. You are entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts. When you buck every scientist and ever scientific naming convention and come up with your own definition of what should be considered a honey bee, sorry brother, you are going to get corrected. Or at least questioned.

Why aren't stingless bees in the genus Apis? If they were, science would class them as honey bees. For now, it's just you.
Sorry.


----------



## mrspock

byron said:


> Why would you assume that any of these people felt that their time was wasted? How petty and presumptuous.


Show me where I claimed that any of these people felt their time was being wasted.


----------



## sqkcrk

hpm08161947 said:


> Mark, do you have any information about how they were transported... (No pallets back then I suppose  ) I have a picture in my mind of Gum log hives in burlap bags periodically being doused with water. How long was the passage? Is there anything about how many they brought?


Herb, I don't recall seeing any detailed listing of how many "bee hives" were shipped. I don't recall exactly whether the Ship's Manifest noted them as "skeps" or "bee hives". But, at that time, in England, they were one and the same, to a beekeeper.

I don't know the details of how they were transported on "this ship" or "the Discovery", but later oceanic transportation of skeps were done by placing them in a barrel packed w/ ice.

I sermize that a wintertime transport was done on purpose to make keeping them cool easier and to get them there before spring. But that is just conjecture on my part.

I don't recall the length of travel, but a cpl of months comes to mind, maybe three.

That's the best I can do. Folks better at Research than I will have to get you better answerts if they are interested. And have the time.


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## WLC

Here's a photographic look at why they should be called honey bees. (take two)

http://www.thehoneygatherers.com/html/photolibrary20.html

They probably still call them honey bees. They never got the Email from the scientists. Ooops.


----------



## hpm08161947

sqkcrk said:


> That's the best I can do. Folks better at Research than I will have to get you better answerts if they are interested. And have the time.


Thanks Mark.... but I think they are more interested in how you spell "Honey Bee" or something like that.


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## WLC

They'd most likely be 'Black bees'.


----------



## sqkcrk

I am quite picky about how things aught to be said and spelled and mean. I usually get booed for trying to suggest that someone is mistaken or didn't really say what they thought they said. But, it seems to me, that in text based conversation, if some group of people are talking about Honeybees, apis mellifera etal, and then want to talk about the wider group of honey producing insects that are beelike and call them honey bees, that makes sense to me. As long as there is a basis of understanding.

To most people, in my experience, any stinging and flying insect is a bee. They don't distinguish any difference. They don't care. They are stinging insects which scare people. Or fascinate them.

WLC and byron,
Would you each make a list, please. Two lists actually. First heading "Honeybees", second heading "honey bees". List under each heading that which you think belongs there.
Thanks.


----------



## hpm08161947

WLC said:


> Here's a photographic look at why they should be called honey bees. (take two)
> 
> http://www.thehoneygatherers.com/html/photolibrary20.html
> 
> .


That is very interesting. Mexico is an amazing place. Thought I knew a thing of two about it... glad to learn more. Thanks.


----------



## sqkcrk

WLC said:


> They'd most likely be 'Black bees'.


Huh? No comprende'.


----------



## WLC

That list is easy.

Honeybee: any Apis species from which honey is gathered.

honey bee: any bee species from which honey is gathered.

Then of course, there's a whole list of the proper names (like Black or German bees) that people have given to each of the breeds or strains. 

Finally, there's the taxonomic names (like Apis mellifera mellifera, which most folks can't remember anyhow).


----------



## byron

sqkcrk said:


> WLC and byron,
> Would you each make a list, please. Two lists actually. First heading "Honeybees", second heading "honey bees". List under each heading that which you think belongs there.
> Thanks.


I can only repeat what is accepted science:
1) "*Honeybees*"--everything in genus_ Apis_.

2) "*honey bees*"--everything in genus _Apis_.

Again, the Entomological Society of America's naming convention, which governs what we call these things in the United States of America, say honey bees, two words, no capitalization, although they understand that even some dictionaries mistakenly spell it as one word.. 
WLC doesn't accept the spelling or the definition of what all other scientists consider to be honey bees. 

See, this thread is about honey bees being brought to America. You and I and everyone else knows what that means, but WLC wants us to say that Guatemala is America and that Mayans are/were Native Americans and that stingless bees that are not _Apis_ are honey bees, despite what historians, geographers, entomologists, etc have to say. 

That way he can say, "Native Americans did have honey bees." It's just not factual. He still thinks that "White Man's Flies" was made up by white people and that honey bees were in the U.S. before the English brought them here. 

And then he refuses to provide any sources for anything he insists is true. 

Sorry, I have a hard time with that. If it isn't _Apis_, it isn't a honey bee. Period. Pandas aren't bears, whales aren't fish, wasps aren't bees and stingless bees are not honey bees.


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## frostygoat

Beating a dead horse!


----------



## byron

WLC said:


> That list is easy.
> 
> Honeybee: any Apis species from which honey is gathered.
> 
> honey bee: any bee species from which honey is gathered.


And you got this information from where? Can I take those two sentences above and e-mail them to any scientist that would actually agree with you? Oh, that's right:



WLC said:


> Sorry byron, but this goes beyond science.


----------



## Barry

OK, enough on this one. Time to move along.


----------



## WLC

I understood what the scientists said. I'm one myself.

I've also pointed out why it is a culturally biased proclamation.

Those Native Americans that you've seen in the images from the above link had absolutely no input into that definition that byron refers to.

And yet, they are gathering honey from bees. Just as they have for thousands of years.

I've frequently referenced Brand (a cultural geographer) who also agrees that these Melipona and Trigona are honey bees. Besides the wax, and perhaps coffee pollination, there's not much else that they are doing with these bees. You've seen the images of them selling the small jars of honey that they've obtained from these bees. There's something very familiar about it.

As someone who is familiar with different stocks of game, I know full well that they all have proper names (with capital letters where appropriate).

The term honey bees is so generic that it's useless as was demonstrated when we were confronted with a different type of honey bee kept by an indigenous people here in the Americas. They already had honey bees here. Europeans brought over the Honeybee.

Sorry, but the scientists have yet again blown what should have been a simple definition. They not only had no clue that livestock/stock has a proper name attached to it, they were incredibly culturally naive by not taking the beekeeping practices of Native Americans into account.

Shame on them.


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## hpm08161947

byron said:


> Do you have something to add? Are you aware of any evidence of honey bees being in America before Europeans brought them? Are you aware of any scientist that considers non-_Apis_ insects to be honey bees?


BYRON... He doesn't have to. He bee the Boss... you know the "Main Man" + he is from Chicago!!


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## Ted Kretschmann

Before this thread gets shut down by Barry. I would like to thank WLC for his link to the melapona site. It is informative. I remember from my travels with my first wife in Mexico, that while the bees are stingless, they can give a pretty good bite. Thus I could never get a look inside of one of the hives, because she was scared of them. Thanks WLC for the inside view of the stingless colonies. I would consider them Honey Bees and the people that keep them Beekeepers. TED


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## byron

According to Thomas Jefferson and others, we asked the Amerinds what they called honey bees, and they said they had never seen them before and called them White Man's Flies:

*The honey-bee is not a native of our continent. Marcgrave indeed mentions a species of honey-bee in Brasil. But this has no sting, and is therefore different from the one we have, which resembles perfectly that of Europe. The Indians concur with us in the tradition that it was brought from Europe; but when, and by whom, we know not. The bees have generally extended themselves into the country, a little in advance of the white settlers. The Indians therefore call them the white man's fly.*

http://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/insects


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## Michael Bush

American Bee Journal June 1923 (Vol 63 No 6) 

starting on page 299

IS THE HONEYBEE NATIVE OF AMERICA?

A Discourse Intended to Commemorate the Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus.

By Jeremy Belknap.

Delivered at the request of the Historical Society of Massachusetts on the 23rd of October, 1792

Dissertation No. 3, on the question whether the honeybee is a native of America.

Mr. Jefferson, in his notes on Virginia, has said that “The honeybee is not a native of our continent. The Indians concur with us in the tradition that it was brought from Europe, but when and by whom we know not. The bees have generally extended themselves into the country, a little in advance of the white settlers. The Indians called them the white man’s fly; and consider their approach as indicating the approach of the settlement of the whites.” He allows that “in Brazil there is a species of honeybee without a sting, but that is very different from the one we have, which perfectly resembles that of Europe.” The facts adduced by the respectable author are true; but they will not warrant his conclusion that “the honeybee, meaning the one resembling that of Europe, is not a native of our continent.”

There is one circumstance in the history of Columbus which proves that bees were known in the islands of the West Indies, at the time of his discovery. When on his first return to Europe he was in danger of perishing at sea, he wrote an account of his discovery on parchment, which he inclosed in a cake of wax, and put into a tight cask, committing the whole to the sea, in hope of it’s being driven on shore or taken up. This was procured in the island of Hispaniola, which he had visited, and it was one of the first fruits of his discovery.

The indefatigable Purchas gives us an account of the revenues of the Empire of Mexico, before the arrival of the Spaniards, as described in its annals; which were pictures drawn on cotton cloth. Among other articles he exhibits the figures of covered pots with two handles, which are said to be pots of “bees’ honey.” Of these pots, two hundred are depicted in one tribute-roll, and one hundred in several others.

This account is confirmed by the late history of Mexico, written by the Abbe Clavigero, a native of Vera Cruz who from a residence of thirty-six years in Mexico, and a minute inquiry into the natural history and antiquities of his country must be supposed to be well informed, and competent to give a just account. He tells us that a part of every useful production of nature or art was paid in tribute to the kings of Mexico, and among other articles of revenue he reckons “600 cups of honey” paid annually by the inhabitants of the southern part of the empire. He also says, “that though they extracted a great quantity of wax from the honeycomb, they either did not know how or were not at pains to make lights of it.”

In his enumeration of the insects of Mexico, he reckons six different kinds of bees which make honey, four of which have no stings, and one of the other two which have stings, one “agrees with the common bee of Europe, not only in size, shape and color, but also disposition and manners, and in qualities of its honey and wax.”

In the account given by Purchas, of the travels of Ferdinado de Soto, in Florida, it is observed that when he came to Chiaha, which by the description was one of the upper branches of the Mobile (now in the State of Georgia) he found among the provisions of the natives “a pot full of honey of bees.” This was A.D. 1540, when there were no Europeans settled on the continent of America, but in Mexico and Peru.

From these authorities it is evident that honeybees were known in Mexico and the islands, before the arrival of the Europeans; and that they had extended as far northward as Florida, a country so denominated from the numberless flowers, which grow there in the wild luxuriance and afford a plenty of food for this useful tribe of insects. The inference is, that bees were not imported by the Spaniards; for however fond they might be of honey as an article of food, or of wax to make tapers for common use, or for the illumination of their churches, yet as bees were known to be in the country there could be no need of importing them. The report of honey and wax being found in the islands, in Mexico, and in Florida, had reached Europe and had been published there long before any emigrations were made to the northward; therefore, if these had been considered as articles of subsistence or of commerce, the sanguine spirit of the first adventurers would have rather led them to think of finding them in America, than of transporting bees from Europe to make them.

As to the circumstance of the bees “extending themselves a little in advance of white settlers,” it cannot be considered as a conclusive argument in favor or their having been first brought from Europe. It is well known that where land is cultivated bees find a greater plenty of food than in the forest. The blossoms of fruit trees, of grasses and grain, particularly clover and buckwheat, afford them a rich and plentiful repast, and they are seen in vast numbers in our fields and orchards at the season of those blossoms. They therefore delight in the neighborhood of “the white settlers”, and are able to increase in numbers, as well as to augment their quantity of stores, by availing themselves of the labors of man. May it not be from this circumstance that the Indians have given them the name of “the white man’s fly”; and that they “consider their approach (or frequent appearance) as indicating the approach of the settlement of the whites?”

The first European settlement in Virginia was made about seventy years after the expedition of De Soto, in Florida, and the first settlement in New England was ten years posterior to that of Virginia. The large intermediate country was uncultivated for a long time afterward. The southern bees, therefore, could have no inducement to extend themselves very far into the northward for many years after the settlements were begun, and within that time bees were imported from Europe.

That honey and wax were not known to the Indians of New England is evident from this, that they had no words in their language for them. When Mr. Eliot translated the Bible into the Indian language, wherever these terms occurred he used the English words, though sometimes with Indian termination.

Joffelyn, who visited New England first in 1638, and afterward in 1663, and wrote an account of his voyage with some sketches of natural history in 1673, speaks of the honeybee in these words: “the honeybees are carried over by the English, and thrive there exceedingly.”

There is a tradition in New England that the person who first brought a hive of bees into the country was rewarded with a grant of land; but the person’s name, or the place where the land lay or by whom the grant was made, I have not been able to learn.

It appears then that the honeybee is a native of America, and that its productions were found by the first European visitors as far northward as Florida and Georgia. It is also true that bees were imported from Europe into New England, and probably into Virginia; but whether if this importation had not taken place, the bees of the southern parts would not have extended themselves northerly, or whether those which we now have are not a mixture of native and imported bees, cannot be determined. It is however certain that they have multiplied exceedingly, and that they are frequently found in New England, in a wild state, in the trunks of hollow trees, as far northward as cultivation and settlements have extended, which is nearly to the 45th degree of latitude.

I have made an inquiry of several persons from Canada, but have not learned that bees were known during their residence in that country. It is, however, not improbable that as cultivation extends, the bees may find their way to the northward of the lakes and rivers of Canada, even though none should be transported thither by the inhabitants.

Still American Bee Journal June 1923 (Vol 63 No 6) 

page 301

EXCERPT FROM THE HISTORY OF MEXICO

By Abbe D. Francesco Saverio Clavigero (1731-1787)

Translated from the original Italian in 1806 by Chas Cullen, Esq.

Excerpt from Book 1, of Volume 1.

There are at least six different kinds of bees. The first is the same as the common bee of Europe, with which it agrees, not only in size, shape and color, but also in its disposition and manners, and in the qualities of its honey and wax.

The second species which differs from the first only in having no sting, is the bee of Yucatan and Chiapa, which makes the fine, clear honey of Estabentun, of an aromatic flavor, superior to that of all other kinds of honey with which we are acquainted. The honey is taken from them six times a year, that is once in every other month; but the best is that which is got in November, being made from a white flower like Jessamine, which blooms in September, called in that country Estabentun, from which the honey has derived its name. The honey of Estabentun is in high estimation with the English and French, who touch at the ports of Yucatan; and I have known the French of Buarico to buy it sometimes for the purpose of sending it as a present to the king.

The third species resembles in its form, the winged ants, but is smaller than the common bee, and without a sting. This insect, which is peculiar to warm and temperate climates, forms nests, in size and shape resembling sugar loaves, and even sometimes greatly exceeding these in size, from trees, and particularly from the oak. The populousness of these hives is much greater than those of the common bee. The nymphs of this bee, which are eatable, are white and round, like a pearl. The honey is of a grayish color, but of a fine flavor.

The fourth species is a yellow bee, smaller than the common one, but like it, furnished with a sting. Its honey is not equal to those already mentioned.

The fifth is a small bee furnished with a sting which constructs its hives of an orbicular form. In subterranean cavities; and the honey is sour and somewhat bitter.

The Tlalpiprolli, which is the sixth species, is black and yellow of the size of the common bee, but has no sting.

Wasp
The Xicotli or Xicote, is a thick black wasp, with a yellow belly, which makes a very sweet honey, in holes made by it in walls. It is provided with a strong sting, which gives a very painful wound. The cuicalmiahautl has likewise a sting, but whether it makes honey or not, we do not know.


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## D Semple

Thanks for the research Michael, you sold me, very informative.

Don


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## mellivore

Michael Bush said:


> In the account given by Purchas, of the travels of Ferdinado de Soto, in Florida, it is observed that when he came to Chiaha, which by the description was one of the upper branches of the Mobile (now in the State of Georgia) he found among the provisions of the natives “a pot full of honey of bees.” This was A.D. 1540, when there were no Europeans settled on the continent of America, but in Mexico and Peru.


Interesting, but a pot of honey/bees in Georgia in 1540 doesn't explain how they got there. Whites may not have recently permanently settled there yet, but we had been travelling there for a long time, and Amerinds had pretty extensive trade routes, and could have obtained a pot of honey from elsewhere. I would be interested to know what this pot was made of. Most likely the pot as well as the bees were obtained from some other culture. 

In 1763, William Bartram reported that bees had been imported to Pensacola by the English, who took possession of Florida from the Spanish that year. (_Robbing the Bees_ by Holley Bishop, p. 37)





Michael Bush said:


> The inference is, that bees were not imported by the Spaniards; for however fond they might be of honey as an article of food, or of wax to make tapers for common use, or for the illumination of their churches, yet as bees were known to be in the country there could be no need of importing them.


As has already been discussed in this thread, Spain outlawed the bringing of bees to the New World, since the beekeepers in Spain didn't want to compete with cheap imports, so Spanish explorers had a reason to fib a little and sneak bees here and say they found them here already. The king of Spain could be induced to believe that, but today we have science to tell us that honey bees were not, in fact, in the U.S. before white men brought them. If De Soto saw a pot of honey in Georgia, the question would be who brought it there, and from where. The only bees that produce something close to honey on the continent before Europeans came were the stingless Mayan bees, but they can't survive anywhere but a select few lowland areas in the Yucatan Peninsula, so they couldn't have made the journey. So unless De Soto saw African honey bees, they must have been European.


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## WLC

There were repeated attempts to colonize the Gulf Coast by the Spanish and the French during the 16th century.

Brand concluded that european Honeybees were introduced to New Spain in the 1520s or 1530s.

It stands to reason that De Soto may have seen honey gathered from ferals that had escaped from the hives of an ill -fated beekeeper (the natives kept wiping out their settlements).

The natives did capture and keep unfortunate european settlers as slaves.

Perhaps the pots of honey bees that De Soto found was the handy work of a captive beekeeper.


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## mellivore

WLC said:


> It stands to reason that De Soto may have seen honey gathered from ferals that had escaped from the hives of an ill -fated beekeeper....


That does seem like the most logical conclusion.



WLC said:


> Perhaps the pots of honey bees that De Soto found was the handy work of a captive beekeeper.


Actually, I think Mr. Bush's article is incorrect on that point. I can find accounts written at the time of De Soto's journey, and nowhere does it say that he saw bees, just a pot or pots of "honey." It could have been honey, or it could have been syrup or what the Indians made from saw palmetto trees down there that resembles honey. In any case, they only found a pot or pots of honey in a single Indian village and never saw anymore after that. So to imply that honey bees are native to the U.S. because one of many European explorers found a single Indian village in possession of a pot (or pots) of honey would be quite a leap. 

-----------------------
Albert James Pickett: HISTORY OF ALABAMA.
(Kindly contributed by William C. Bell)

CHAPTER I.

DE SOTO IN ALABAMA, GEORGIA AND MISSISSIPPI.

June 1540: Chiaha contained a great quantity of bear's oil in gourds, and walnut oil as clear as butter and equally palatable; *and for the only time upon the entire route were seen pots of honey.*

-------------------------------------

When reading de Soto's narrative of the Conquest
of Florida, the following statement is made:

The Spaniards found in this village a quantity of bears grease preserved in pots, and likewise oil made from the walnut, and a pot of honey. *The latter they had not seen before, nor did they ever again meet with it during their wanderings.*

------------------------
So, it remains safe to say honeybees didn't exist in the U.S. until brought here by Whites.


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## Michael Bush

>but today we have science to tell us that honey bees were not, in fact, in the U.S. before white men brought them. 

Based on what evidence?

>So, it remains safe to say honeybees didn't exist in the U.S. until brought here by Whites. 

I don't think it's "safe" to say honeybees did or did not exist in the U.S. without more evidence than has been currently collected. My point is not that they were here, but that the subject has and is open for debate as no compelling evidence has been presented that would conclusively prove it one way or the other.

The article I quoted was published in ABJ in 1923, but it is from a presentation given in 1792. Much closer chronologically to the actual facts in question. In that same edition of ABJ there is an appeal by Frank Pellet to the effect that there was still no compelling evidence to prove it one way or another and asking anyone who had access to an more information on the matter of Native American honeybees to please bring it forward. I haven't seen anything new since that time that would convince me one way or the other conclusively.


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## mellivore

Michael Bush said:


> Based on what evidence?


What evidence would satisfy you? The only evidence of pre-European bees in the U.S. is the 14 million year old fossil in Nevada. I have yet to find a scientist of any field that says anything but that those went extinct millions of years ago, and honey bees made their next appearance in this country when Europeans brought them here. 

If experts in the fields of Anthropology, Archeology, Entomology, Zoology and History can't convince you of a thing, I'm sure I can't help you.




Michael Bush said:


> I don't think it's "safe" to say honeybees did or did not exist in the U.S. without more evidence than has been currently collected.


What evidence could be collected of a thing that didn't exist, one might wonder? 



Michael Bush said:


> I haven't seen anything new since that time that would convince me one way or the other conclusively.


I am secure in the belief that you never will, either. 
And somewhere a blue-haired old lady thinks wrestling is real and the moon landings were faked. 

We seem to all be very clear on everything else that we know wasn't here before Europeans brought them (horses, beads, guns, mirrors, soap, the alphabet, the wheel, etc.....) but all of a sudden you seem to have a difficult time with one particular area, honeybees. 

You appear to be motivated in your belief by some emotional attachment to the issue instead of logic and reason. Let the facts lead you. 

Admitting that De Soto, a very prolific explorer, came across a single instance of a honey like substance in a pot in a single village, never seeing any bees and not seeing any other honey before or after that one time should tell you something in itself. 

Do you think it's all a big conspiracy to deprive Amerinds of the existence of an insect? The entire scientific world has gotten together to erase honey bees from American pre-history? The list of things we had to bring here is so mind bogglingly huge already, why would we lie about bugs?

If it helps you get through the day believing in certain things, go for it, but don't lose all of your credibility here by trying to deny basic facts.


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## Michael Bush

I have no attachment to the idea at all. I just don't believe something just because it's a commonly held belief. I prefer evidence.


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## mellivore

Michael Bush said:


> I have no attachment to the idea at all. I just don't believe something just because it's a commonly held belief. I prefer evidence.


Well of course, and do let us know if you ever actually find any evidence supporting your belief that honey bees somehow made it to America before we brought them here.

You might find a little logic and common sense handy as well. Think about it: We know of ancient honey robbing before we domesticated honey bees, through cave paintings, etc...We know about the practices and methods of Sumerian, Egyptian, and Greek beekeeping. We even know what type of hives the Mayans used in their stingless beekeeping. We know what all of these cultures used the honey and wax for. We see the jewelery they made, we know the names of their bee gods (goddesses, rather) we see depictions of bees on pottery, etc....Since honey can be preserved forever, basically, we even see the mummification process using honey with actual bees still in there in some cases. We can observe this everywhere honey bees were kept/robbed by man. How could any intelligent adult believe that American Indians had a culture of beekeeping prior to the arrival of Europeans? How did it leave no trace? Was it a secret species of honey bees nobody has ever heard of? Did the Indians keep them in the Honeycomb Hideout? We have no paintings, no drawings, no pottery, no clay pots sealed with wax, no nothing. How could archeologists find this stuff all over the ancient world but come up empty here? Is it a conspiracy? 

It's not just a "commonly held belief" that honey bees weren't here, it's a fact. I know some folks pride themselves on marching to a different drummer and going against the conventional wisdom, and there are times when that will be correct. This is not one of those times. 

I wish you were right. There is tons of archeological evidence of ancient Egyptians and Phoenicians travelling through America thousands of years ago, and I would love to know that they brought their bees with them. Of course, that still would have made them "white man's flies," but it would mean that honey bees pre-date modern European exploration here. I'd like to believe that they did bring bees here, and that they went extinct when their bringers were wiped out, returned home or intermarried with the Amerinds. 

I'd love to know it if it's true, but I can't just cling to a belief with no actual evidence without being considered an irrational fanatic, and neither can you.


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## WLC

>How could any intelligent adult believe that American Indians had a culture of beekeeping prior to the arrival of Europeans?<

byron:

We already know that indigenous people kept honey bees long before the arrival of the Spanish.

If both Mr. Bush and myself can dig up references showing why Chapter 1 of Tammy Horn's 'Bees in America' isn't 'authoritative', then that's the whole point of this debate.


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## mellivore

WLC said:


> We already know that indigenous people kept honey bees long before the arrival of the Spanish.


Right. Mayan stingless bees. Got it. Said it myself. We all know it. Not what's being discussed. We also know those Mayan stingless bees can only live in a few lowland areas of the Y.P. and I don't believe anyone is claiming that they managed to travel to the U.S.
Let's get our definitions clarified here:

Native Americans/American Indians= Amerinds in the U.S.A., as the ancient Mayans/Aztecs/Olmecs never referred to themselves as American Indians, nor do their descendants. 

America= U.S.A. 

OK? Are we clear once and for all here? You keep wanting to stretch the word _America_ to mean the entire Western Hemisphere, and _Native Americans_ to therefore mean ancient Mayans and Aztecs or whatever. 

Everyone that has read this entire thread knows that you don't like the fact that entomologists don't consider Apis Melipona to be honey bees, and that the substance they produce could never be marketed as honey bee honey. You don't like that, we get it. It's also irrelevant and off topic since the thread is titled (and about) bees in America. Not the Yucatan Peninsula. 

Do you own a copy, or have you read, Dr. Horn's book, _Bees in America_?


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## lazy shooter

This thread has run so long that for those of us that are not history buffs (that is almost everyone), don't know who to believe. This has turned into a pissing contest for the eletes among us. I still don't really know what it has to do with bee keeping. 

To all of you internet warriors still feeding this thread, may the best man, er, person win. I assume the last poster will be the winner.


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## dehavik

lazy shooter said:


> To all of you internet warriors still feeding this thread, may the best man, er, person win. I assume the last poster will be the winner.


You know, you've just ascertained that this thread will continue ad nauseum. Never challenge people to see who can "have the last word"!


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## mellivore

lazy shooter said:


> I still don't really know what it has to do with bee keeping.


Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Most of the other threads here are for telling you to put the super on top and why queen excluders suck. This happened to be a thread about a tiny sliver of bee keeping history, and was about something that apparently even some experienced beekeepers were previously unaware of. 

I don't know why anyone would waste their time telling everyone how uninteresting a thread is. I assume anyone not interested would stop reading each new post. 

It shouldn't really be a debate. The fact that honey bees were unheard of in pre-European America is accepted by everyone with any knowledge of biology, zoology, entomology, history and anthropology. I think the one and only place on earth this is being denied is by one person on one thread of one message board.


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## WLC

Why is this reference that Mr. Bush provided for us,

"American Bee Journal June 1923 (Vol 63 No 6) 

starting on page 299

IS THE HONEYBEE NATIVE OF AMERICA?

A Discourse Intended to Commemorate the Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus.

By Jeremy Belknap.", 

unacceptable to you alone (yes, you are the only one who finds this to be unacceptable)?

It says clearly, 'From these authorities it is evident that honeybees were known in Mexico and the islands, before the arrival of the Europeans; and that they had extended as far northward as Florida...".

Get used to fact that 1621 isn't the authoritative date for the introduction of honey bees into the mainland U.S. .


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## waynesgarden

mellivore said:


> It shouldn't really be a debate. The fact that honey bees were unheard of in pre-European America is accepted by everyone with any knowledge of biology, zoology, entomology, history and anthropology. I think the one and only place on earth this is being denied is by one person on one thread of one message board.


Funny how you are the second person, absolutely brand new to beekeeping from the same state, that only very recently joined this these forums to tell others that there should not be any discussion on points that they hold to be "facts." Your "predecessor" argued a "fact" in this thread until he was blue in the face and then had to admit he was wrong.

If you had one one hundredth the experience or knowledge of bees as that "one person" you refer to, your "facts" might be accepted less critically. Hard to prove a negative, I know, but I'll second the call for actual evidence, rather than popular opinion. Not that it is very important to me; I just enjoy the fervor of brand new "experts" on these boards. 

Wayne


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## mellivore

WLC said:


> Get used to fact that 1621 isn't the authoritative date for the introduction of honey bees into the mainland U.S. .


Like I said, I'd love to be wrong, I think Egyptians/Phoenicians brought honey bees here thousands of years ago, but I can't find evidence that they did or that the bees survived. 

Your previous position was that European honey bees brought to New Spain by the Spaniards had made it north to Florida before the English brought theirs to the east coast. Now you are saying that honey bees made it to Florida before any Europeans came here? Interesting. Do we have more evidence than an article from 1923? There are many articles and books stating that there were not honey bees in Florida back then, so do you just cherry pick the one article that supports your new position?

Do some research and get back to us: What type of bees made it to Florida? Stingless Mayan bees? I don't think so, since they can't survive outside their tiny little environmental niche (which is why they are so endangered, remember?) 

Maybe this guess that honey bees made it to Florida is based on De Soto seeing a pot of honey-like substance in a single Indian village in Georgia. But remember, he didn't see any bees, so it may not have been actual honey, it might have been some of the fruit/saw palmetto syrup the Indians made, or it may have been actual honey from somewhere else. Try to remember that De Soto said they never saw anything else like it before that or for the rest of their journey through the region. 

Trust me, I can find a ton of magazine articles from the 1920's that you would vehemently disagree with today. 

Show some initiative, tell us who else backs up this claim that honey bees migrated north to Florida in pre-historic American times. What honey bees, from where?


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## WLC

byron:

I've said that Honeybees were brought to New Spain in the 1520s or 1530s as concluded by, Brand, Donald (1988) 'The Honey Bee In New Spain and Mexico', Journal of Cultural Geography, 9:1, 71-82.

'honey bees' were already here (like Melipona/Trigona).

You still don't get the difference between 'honey bee' and 'Honeybee'.

It's obvious by now that historical scholars have a different definition for 'honey bee' than the ESA.

Since we are talking about the historical work, 'Bees in America', then guess what? The conventions that historians use apply.


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## mellivore

WLC said:


> Since we are talking about the historical work, 'Bees in America', then guess what? The conventions that historians use apply.


Have you actually read Dr. Horn's book?

Anyway, Mr. Bush's 1923 article that says honey bees must have migrated to Florida was based on the thoughts of Jeremy Belknap in 1792. His writings were based on the fact that De Soto saw a pot of honey in Georgia. 

Again, interesting, but archeologists also found tobacco in the tombs of ancient pharoahs, but tobacco wasn't grown in Egypt, it was brought there. A pot of honey in Georgia doesn't mean honey bees were in Georgia, anymore than a single AHB colony in Minnesota would mean that AHB had migrated there already. It just means one was brought there from somewhere else. 

Can you tell us what type of bees migrated to Florida and from where?


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## WLC

I've got Tammy Horn's book right next to me. Yes, I've read it (yawn). I liked 'The Beekeeper's Lament' alot more.

I'd say that the honey bees that the natives kept in Florida before europeans arrived were likely Melipona/Trigona. By De Soto's time, they could also have been European honey bees/Honeybees that were brought by settlers (who were most likely killed by the natives).

Since you're asking me, let me ask you one.

Did you get a chance to get a copy of 'Brand, Donald (1988) 'The Honey Bee In New Spain and Mexico', Journal of Cultural Geography, 9:1, 71-82.' ?

Or, doesn't your 'Home School' have institutional access to journals? :banana:


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## Barry

mellivore said:


> Show some initiative, tell us who else backs up this claim that honey bees migrated north to Florida in pre-historic American times. What honey bees, from where?


Well mellivore, you just can't get away from writing just like byron. I got a hunch you'll be joining him soon.


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## mellivore

Barry said:


> I got a hunch you'll be joining him soon.


Yes, actually we'll be going to the lake with him tomorrow. Have I broken a rule of your forum, besides showing interest in a topic and encouraging people to research it? 

If not, let me stay on topic here:

This has a few typos, as it was converted from PDF:

*Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, Volume 3 By American Philosophical Society*


On his return to Europe, after having discovered the American islands, Guanahani, Cuba, Hispaniola, &c. 
Columbus finding his ship endangered by a violent storm, and fearing that the knowledge of those countries to which he was conducting the nations of Europe, was likely to perish, is said to have written an account of his discovery on parchment, which he enclosed in a cake of wax, and then committed the whole to the sea, "in hopes," to use the words of Robertson, «« that some fortunate accident might 
preserve a deposit of so much importance to the worlds." This wax Columbus procured in Hifpaniola§.

*A naturalist cannot but be surprised to find Dr. Belknap* considering this story of the cake of wax as a 
proof "that bees were known in the islands of the West-Indies," when they were discovered by Columbus, 
if by the word "bees" the doctor means, what I presume he does, the true honey-bees. 
*
It is much more probable*, that this wax was the fabric of some other species of the bee. It is not impossible, however, that it was the produce of a vegetable, since we are acquainted with some plants which furnish large quantities of wax: such is the Myrica cerifera, which grows very commonly in various parts of the new-world, as well as in the southern countries, of Africa.

In answer to these objections of Dr. Belknap, it is obvious to remark, that as there are, at least, six distinct species of honey-making bees in Mexico, five of which are said, by Clavigero, to be* different from the apis mellifica or true honey-bee of Europe*, we are certainly not warranted to conclude, that the honey which was paid in tribute to the monarchs of Mexico, was the fabric of this most important 
species of the family.

I will not deny that the true honey-bee is not found in Mexico; not only because so respectable an author as Clavigero has asserted that it is, or at least a bee agreeing with it, but because we can hardly suppose that the Spaniards, in the long period of more than two centuries and a half, would have neglected to introduce an animal of
so much importance. But it must be recollected that Clavigero only informs us, that this* true honey-bee 
is now found in Mexico. He has not attempted to prove that it was found there two or three hundred years ago. *



*The next argument employed by Dr. Belknap is extremely feeble.* He finds, in Purchas, that when Ferdinand de Soto came with his army to Chiaha, which was in July 1540, he found among the provisions of the native Indians of that place, "a spot full of honie of bees." As there were no Europeans settled on the continent of America at this time except in Mexico and in Peru, the doctor seems to think this solitary pot of honey favours his opinion, for immediately after he fays "it is evident" that honey-bees (meaning 
the true honey-bees) were found as far to the northward as Florida, before the arrival of the Europeans in the islands and on the continent of America.
*
Let us examine this argument.* If the existence of the true honey-bee in Florida as early as the year 1540, was supported by nothing more than the pot of honey found at the village of Chiaha, *I think, the ground of argument is very feeble indeed*: for it no more follows that this honey was the fabric of the apis mellifica than that the tributary honey of the Mexicans was the production of that animal.

But the following quotation renders it probable, that at the period which I have just mentioned, the true honeybee was not found in Florida. In a curious little work, entitled _A Relation of the invasion and conquest of Florida by the Spaniards under the command of Fernando de Soto_, which was written by a Portuguese gentleman, who accompanied the Spanish general in his "mad adventures''^ in Florida, we are informed that the Indians of Chiaha "had a great deal of Butter, or rather Sewet, in pots that run like 
Oyl; they said it was Bear's grease: we found WalnutOyl there also, as clear as the Sewet, and of a very good taste, ■with a pot of Honey, though before nor after we found neither Bees nor Honey in all Florida." *

* The Naturall and Morall Historie of the East and West Indies, &c. p. 30J and 304. English translation. 

London 1604. 4. f Description of the Isthmus of America. London 1704. 8vo, \ Purchas. Vol. v. p. 1539.

This simple relation of a fact is very pointed. Soto and his successor Louis Moscosod, Alvarado had rambled over an extensive tract of country from the end of May, or the beginning of June, 1539 to July 1543. The granaries and the store-houses of the unfortunate natives were constantly ransacked by an army of needy Spaniards.* The troops passed through extensive forests, and yet they never saw but one pot of honey, and no bees at all.* If the honey-bee had been a native of the countries which were the scene of Soto's villanies, the valuable products of this little insect would have been more frequently met with, and the bees, in territories pregnant with a profusion of sweet-smelling and nectareous plants, would, doubtless, have been seen very often, and in great numbers.

Thus far the opinion of Mr. Jefferson seems to be strongly supported by historical evidence; and, I think, we are warranted to assert that the* true honey-bee was not originally an indigenous animal of the southern parts of the American continent*. But this opinion may be supported by other arguments. 

J The Modern Universal History. Vol. XL. page 393. Edition of 1763. * See page 71.


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## waynesgarden

mellivore said:


> Yes, actually we'll be going to the lake with him tomorrow.


And I'll be going out to super hives in some outyards with Wayne tomorrow. We expect it will be a nice day.

Wayne


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## mellivore

Michael Bush said:


> The article I quoted was published in ABJ in 1923, but it is from a presentation given in 1792. Much closer chronologically to the actual facts in question. .


*A general collection of the best and most interesting voyages and ..., Volume 13
By John Pinkerton* P. 469

Nov. 8th. Several English and Swedish economists kept bee-hives, which afforded their possessors profit: for bees succeed very well here : the wax was for the most part 
sold to tradesmen: but the honey they made use of in their own families, in different ways. The people were unanimous, *that the common bees were not in North America before the arrival of the Europeans* ; but that they were first brought over by the English who settled here. The Indians likewise generally declare, *that their fathers had never seen any bees either in the woods or any where else*, before the Europeans had been several years settled here. This is further confirmed by the name which the Indians give them: for having no particular name for them in their language, they call them English flies, because the English first brought them over; but at present they fly plentifully about the woods of North America. However it has been observed, that the bees always, when they swarm, spread to the southward, and never to the northward. It seems as if they do not find the latter countries so good for their constitution: therefore they cannot stay in Canada, and all that have been carried over thither, died in winter. It seemed to me as if the bees in America were somewhat smaller than ours in Sweden. They have not yet been found in the woods on the other side of the Blue Mountains, which confirms the opinion of their being brought to America of late. A man told Mr. Bartram, that on his travels in the woods of North America, he had found another sort of bees, which, instead of separating their wax and honey, mixed it both together in a great bag. But this account wants both clearing up and confirming.


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## sqkcrk

This Thread has gotten to the point where people are talkiong beliefs. Until each side admits that their beliefs are just opinions everyone will just keep talking at each other w/ no one listening.

W/ all of the opinions out there, the facts have been hard to cull out of the Posts. But one fact is clear. Honeybees were brought to Jamestown,VA in 1619. Whether there were any European Honeybees in North America before then is, in my opinion, hard to believe.


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## mellivore

sqkcrk said:


> Until each side admits that their beliefs are just opinions everyone will just keep talking at each other w/ no one listening.


Don't give up yet!
I just found a *letter written by Langstroth* himself regarding the issue of introduction of honey bees to America. 

Gleanings in bee culture, Volume 23


"Dear Ervett .-—Since I sent you Mr. Malin's letter I find that there is a very full discussion'of the question whether the honey-bee was indigenous to this continent, by Prof. A. Gerstaker, of Berlin, who sent it to Wm. Wagner. This article was translated by Samuel Wagner from the German, and published in Vol. II. of the *American Bee Journal for July, 1868*. Mr. Malin's letter to me was writien In the fall of 
1864, and antedates Gersiaker's essay; still I think that you will do well to publish Malin's letter; but I thought It only right to call your attention to Gerstaker's essay.
[signed]
L. L. Lanqstroth.

Dayton, O., Aug. 1.

WAS THE HONEY BEE INDIGENOUS OR NOT IN THIS
COUNTRY? A CAREFUL REVIEW OF ALL THE EVIDENCE.

Philadelphia, Sept, 24, 1884. Ret'. L. L. Langstroth:—My Dear Brother:—1 have consulted the paper of Dr. Barton, to which you referred me, and find that his conclusion, from all the evidence attainable in his day 11792), was precisely that to which my researches had conducted me; viz., that the honey-bee was not native, but was introduced from Europe. Had I known of Barton's essay it might have saved me some 
trouble, as he refers to, and quotes, sundry authors from " Purchas his Pilgrim," down to Bartram, which I had some trouble in hunting up. He, however, adds what I think a material fact as regards our inquiry: 
and that is, that *none of the Indians occupying these regions* had any original names in their languages (or the bee or its products; and Elliot, when translating the Bible, was. In consequence, obliged to use the English names with Indian terminations. Subsequently, when the Delawares became acquainted with the honey-bee they applied to it their name for the wasp, and called honey by a name which signified the 
"sweet or sugar of the wasp;" and wax by one which meant the "fat, grease, or tallow " of the wasp.

I find that Barton's paper was prompted by one written by the* Rev. Dr. Belknap, who contended that the honey-bee was native on this continent*, in its southern portions, at least In Mexico and Cuba. I have read Belknap's paper, and have consulted the authorities he quotes, and am quite satisfied that *he was wrong.* Even he, however, admits that our insect was not found north of Florida, or the southern portion of Georgia. He also says, " There is a tradition in New England," the authenticity of which he was 
unable to trace, "that the person who first brought a hive of bees Into the country was rewarded with a grant of land."

Further, Mr. John Josselyn (whose book I have also consulted), who was in New England In 1638, and again 
in 1643, in some account of his voyages published in London in 1673 thus speaks of the honey-bee: "The honey-bees are carried over by the English, and thrive there exceedingly."

The Rev. Mr. Heckewelder assured Prof. Barton that, although he had seen the true honey-bees wild in various parts of the United States at some distance from settlements,* he was always assured by the Indians that these insects were not known in these countries* before the whites began to settle them. 

Barton adds that it is very unlikely that these Indians could be mistaken on the subject, as they are by no means incurious observers, and are as fond of honey as the bears are.

Mr. Wm. Bartram, who traveled in West Florida in 1775. informed Barton that he was shown as a curiosity a bee-hive, the only one in that extensive country. *Introduced there from England when the English t*ook possession of Pensacola in 1763. He had seen the honey-bee wild in East Florida, but was satisfied from his inquiries that *it is not a native of the country*.

Barton says. "The honey-bee was not found by the first settlers in Kentucky: but about the year 1780 a hive was brought by a Colonel Herrod to the Rapids of the Ohio, since which time these Insects have increased prodigiously." Was this not the probable origin of those seen by your octogenarian friend?***

The only authority quoted by Dr. Belknap for the probable existence of the bee in any part of the United States is the finding of a single pot of honey by the expedition of DeSoto at a place called Chiaha. On an Island surrounded by shallow water, supposed to be on the upper part of the Mobile Hiver. in Southern Georgia, I have referred to the narrative, as translated In Purchas. and find that this was the only 
honey seen or heard of by the expedition,

***This refers to information given me by an octogenarian clerk of the courts, residing, in 1857, In 
Hardlnshurg. Ky. He recollected seeing honeybees at so early a date in Kentucky that he had always taken it for granted that they were natives there.

I had read somewhere that, at the time the honey-bees was first introduced in America, the Norwegians were not troubled by the bee-moth {Tinea mcllonella). As the bees in New England were not infested by this moth until 1805, it would seem quite possible that the first bees imported into New England might have come from some country where this pest was not known, and not from any part of the English Isles where it had been so long known. (See Dr. Klrtland's account of its first appearance near Boston. Mass , 

In my work, "The Hive and Honey-bee," 3d edition, page 240. L. L. L.


........which met with no bees. The granaries and storehouses of the natives were constantly ransacked by these needy Spaniards, from June, 1539, to July, 1543; and Barton pertinently remarks, "Had the honey-bee been 
a native of the countries which were the scene of DeSoto's villanies, the valuable products of this insect would have been frequently met with, and the bees, in territories pregnant with a profusion of nectareous plants, would have been seen very often, and in great numbers.

In addition to the above I may add that I have carefully consulted the narratives of many early travelers, from Father Hennepin down, and find no mention of honey having been met with on any occasion than as above stated. Had the Indians possessed honey would they not have set it before some of their guests and would the latter, who mention every thing else they met with, have forgotten honey?

In conclusion, as no one pretends that the honeybee was found in New England, as Josselyn, who, in 1838, must have known the first English settlers, and been familiar with their doings here, says expressly that they introduced our beloved insect, I think we may very safely dispense with the Norwegian theory of their introduction, and assume that the *Apis mellifica is a valuable European insect for whose introduction and naturalization here we are indebted (as for many other blessings) to the people of the Mayflower, or their immediate followers. *
[signed]
Wm. G. Mai.in.


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## WLC

sqkcrk said:


> But one fact is clear. Honeybees were brought to Jamestown,VA in 1619. Whether there were any European Honeybees in North America before then is, in my opinion, hard to believe.


Why would you find it hard to believe that the Spaniards brought the European honey bee to New Spain (North America) during the 100 years before Jamestown or Plymouth?


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## sqkcrk

What ilttle I have read of and seen documentation of leads me to believe this. But it is just a belief, an opinion. And you are welcome to yours. As I hope you will respectfully allow mine.

We could substitute Climate Change as the subject of this Thread and have just about the same "discussion".


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## WLC

'Until each side admits that their beliefs are just opinions everyone will just keep talking at each other w/ no one listening.'

You bemoan opinion, then you give one?

I'm referencing the work of a scholar, Donald Brand, who reached the conclusion that the Spanish introduced the European honey bee into New Spain during the 1520s or 1530s.

He wrote 12 pages, based on 66 pages of notes that are kept in the archives at the University of Texas as the Brand Papers.

It's not an opinion. It's a well researched conclusion from a scholar.

I hope that you understand the difference.


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## sqkcrk

So, you maintain that his conclusions are as good as facts? Does he site facts? Data? Records of the existence of colonies of bees transported from one side of the ocean to another? Or observations of colonies already here?

I simply asked that we all recognize that we hold opinions, which aren't facts. And that our beliefs are not facts either, but opinions.


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## Michael Bush

>Well of course, and do let us know if you ever actually find any evidence supporting your belief that honey bees somehow made it to America before we brought them here.

I don't have a belief that they did. I just think there is evidence they might have and no proof they did not. I'm not the one with a belief at stake here.

>I'd love to know it if it's true, but I can't just cling to a belief with no actual evidence without being considered an irrational fanatic, and neither can you. 

But you are clinging to a belief that they were not here with no actual evidence to prove it. I have no beliefs on the matter, I just find it an interesting topic.


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## mellivore

Gravity and evolution are theories.
"Vanilla is yummy," is an opinion. 

The lack of honey bees in prehistoric America may not be a scientific law, but it is a known historical fact. Langstroth was interested enough in the subject to research it, and he helped completely debunk the only guy in 1792 that ever suggested that honey bees pre-date Europeans in America.


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## WLC

sqkcrk:

Yes, he cites facts and records. Like I said, he was a scholar.

Would I say that his conclusions are as good as facts? Yes, but with the qualification that Honeybees were introduced to New Spain well before Honeybees were introduced to Jamestown or Plymouth.

The Honeybee was introduced by europeans, while honey bees were already being kept by indigenous people.


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## mellivore

WLC said:


> The Honeybee was introduced by europeans, while honey bees were already being kept by indigenous people.


You seem to continue to be geographically challenged. This thread continues to be about honey bees in America. No "indigenous" people in America knew what honey bees were until Europeans brought them. You do get that, right? Stingless bees kept by Mayans in the rain forests of the Yucatan Peninsula have nothing to do with honey bees _not_ being kept by American Indians in America.


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## WLC

'You seem to continue to be geographically challenged.'

byron, are we going there yet again? 'America' doesn't just mean the continental U.S. .

Melipona and Trigona ARE honey bees. As long as the historians involved in this topic say they are, then they are.

Mr. Bush does have an interesting argument: the lack of evidence doesn't suffice as proof.

I think that it's quite possible European honey bees were introduced to the continental U.S. well before Jamestown or Plymouth by the Spanish. New Spain made up more than half of the continental U.S. at one point. Heck, they could have easily swarmed their way up from Vera Cruz.


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## mellivore

WLC said:


> 'America' doesn't just mean the continental U.S. .


Yeah, it does. Do people in Belize say, "Hello, I'm from America"? Nope. Who are you to say they are Americans from America? That's kind of condescending, isn't it? Besides, the guy who started this thread made clear what everybody but you already knew, America means America. 




WLC said:


> Mr. Bush does have an interesting argument: the lack of evidence doesn't suffice as proof.


It's only interesting because he's the only one making it. If lack of evidence means we just don't know, then fine, we can't "prove" honey bees weren't here before Europeans, and Native Americans can't "prove" we weren't here before them. How do we "know" zebras weren't already here? Or gorillas? Or cows and horses? Or Cape Cobras? How come we can know all those things weren't here, but all of a sudden, with honey bees, one guy wants to dispute science and history with no evidence? 



WLC said:


> I think that it's quite possible European honey bees were introduced to the continental U.S. well before Jamestown or Plymouth...


Woopee. Great. So what? Maybe they did, I don't care, and it's not what the thread is about. Who cares whether Spain or England gets credit for introducing honey bees to America?
If the Indians called them White Man's Flies because they had never seen them before, Spain and England are both white European countries, so what's the point? When Indians were introduced to honey bees, I don't think they had ever heard of either England or Spain, either, and didn't care about the difference.


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## WLC

'Besides, the guy who started this thread made clear what everybody but you already knew, America means America.'

You're talking about youself in the third person. That's kinda strange.

'America means America.'

Huh? 

'Who cares whether Spain or England gets credit for introducing honey bees to America?'

Well, Tammy Horn got it wrong for the Honeybee. However, Dr. Donald Brand felt that it was important enough for him to research. It was the Spanish who introduced the Honeybee to 'America'. The indigenous people of 'America' already kept 'honey bees'.


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## mellivore

WLC said:


> Well, Tammy Horn got it wrong for the Honeybee. However, Dr. Donald Brand felt that it was important enough for him to research. It was the Spanish who introduced the Honeybee to 'America'. The indigenous people of 'America' already kept 'honey bees'.


Oh, maybe that's the source of your confusion. Dr. Horn's book is called "Bees in America," so you think she left out bees being brought to the western hemisphere because you consider Mexico and Belize and the Yucatan Peninsula to be in "America." Did it occur to you that most people know America to mean "The United States of America"? You can't be unaware of that, right? I think Dr. Horn meant to write about, you know, this country, not other countries. 

I guess we could really be sensitive and just call the whole thing Turtle Island. But you never answered my question: Why do you call people from Belize "Americans."? Did they say they want to be called Americans? 

West Virginia and Virginia are different states, even though they both have the word "Virginia" in them. Different places. 
When I say I'm going to Virginia, nobody asks, "Which one?" Everyone understands that Virginia is Virginia, and America is America, even though South America has the word "America" in it, it's a different continent....you do know that? 

So when Tammy Horn or I (or anyone else) refers to honey bees in America, we are referring to this country, OK? You get that? Did we clear that up? Mayans never referred to themselves as American Indians, OK? If you have any evidence that people in the rain forest think they are American Indians living in America, can you share that?

Because otherwise, we have to just keep saying it for you, "Europeans brought honey bees to (the United States of) America." 

How did you like that letter by Langstroth? Pretty cool find, huh? I notice you wanted to ignore that.


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## Ted Kretschmann

Trade is a two way steak. If I have something you want, what will you give in return?? Having stated this, it has been proven that the Egyptians did import Cotton from South America along with Coca leaf. Thus there was a long tenuous trade route from Egypt to South America. So what if honeybees might have been part of the trade items that were traded to the Pre Columbian Americans??? There are pockets of A.M. Lamarikii genetics found in areas in the Southeast. It runs around 2 percent in the general Honeybee population in these areas. While these bees are most likely brought in by Queen breeders in the 1890's, despite their firery temper, for their golden color, I find it interesting that we have these genetics in the Southeastern USA. WLC being a geneticist, I thought he would find this interesting. TK


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## Pugs

Ted,

That is interesting. Another thing I find interesting is in coastal region of Florida, there is a small percentage of unknown genetics in some of the feral bees. 

I'll try to find the article, if you like. I think it was published in the 90s.

Pugs


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## WLC

byron:

Most of the continental U.S. was New Spain territory at one time. Horn and you seem to have overlooked that historical fact.

You use the term 'America'. I call it the U.S. or the U.S.A. . 

When I'm overseas, I call myself a New Yorker. 

However, 400-500 years ago, there were plenty of other names that parts of the continental U. S. were known as.

'Mayans never referred to themselves as American Indians, OK?'

I didn't think that the Native Americans referred to themselves as American Indians. Although I've heard of the term Amerinds to refer to indigenous peoples of the Americas.

Indians are from India.

'Because otherwise, we have to just keep saying it for you, "Europeans brought honey bees to (the United States of) America." '

Europeans may have brought Honeybees to the continental U. S., but the indigenous people of the Americas already had honey bees.

Yes, that's some good digging to get a Langstroth letter.

So, he's your De Soto/Honeybee debunker.

But, he's not the final word on Honeybees in New Spain before Jamestown or Plymouth.


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## WLC

Ted:

DNA barcoding to determine the origins feral bees is possible. I'd wonder how far back some of those feral colonies might go.


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## sqkcrk

WLC said:


> New Spain made up more than half of the continental U.S. at one point. Heck, they could have easily swarmed their way up from Vera Cruz.


Maybe you shouldn't be saying "continental U.S.", because there was no U.S. until, was it 1784?. So please, refer to what you mean as Continental North America. Which is what it was called at thge time, I believe.

Would you agree that what is "quite possible" and "could have" are not the same as "did"? One can imagine all sorts of things, and they have here in this Thread, but that does not mean those things happened. Maybe, if colonies of european bees were brought here by Spaniards, the forage was so lush and plentiful the bees would have no reason to expand their territory as far as you imagine. Not that I imagine that is true, just supposing.


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## sqkcrk

WLC said:


> You're talking about youself in the third person.


I don't know what you think you gain by continuing to poke at this belief of yours. What you believe has not been established as true. Otherwise someone would have banned mellivore too.

Let's try to stick to the topic. Which has gone from "White Man's Flies" to which white man brought them here first.


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## WLC

sqkcrk:

I'd call it Continental North America but I'm really talking about the current extent of the U.S. .

'I don't know what you think you gain by continuing to poke at this belief of yours. What you believe has not been established as true. Otherwise someone would have banned mellivore too.'

I'd say that 'sock-puppets' should be tossed into the hamper as soon as they are detected. Why? Because they are a form of trolling that is as old as the internet itself.

It seems from the reference that Mr. Bush provided that Columbus reported that the 'Indians' kept honey bees.
So, there is a report of 'Indians' keeping honey bees from 'the Admiral' himself. I would consider the 'West Indies' to be part of America. In fact, they are in the first maps of America by Amerigo Vespucci.


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## Barry Digman

Just as a point of reference in case the subject comes up: 



> Discussing moderation.
> Concerns, constructive criticism and questions of clarification regarding the User Agreement or moderator and administrator actions are best addressed directly to the moderator or administrator by private message or personal e-mail. Do not post on the board to debate, criticize, argue or challenge the Beesource Beekeeping Forums User Agreement, the moderators, administrators, or their actions. You agree to abide by the wishes of the board moderators in interpreting and enforcing these rules. Refusal to cooperate with board moderators or to abide by these rules is grounds for revocation of your posting privileges.
> 
> http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?226194-Forum-Rules


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## WLC

BD:

Looks like it's been taken care of.


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## Ted Kretschmann

WLC, You must find a good research library that has ALL the gleanings and ABJ magazines back to the very first ones. The USDA beltsville bee lab has a complete library. From there you will be able to put together dates of when races of bees were imported into the USA. How to determine this??? Just look at what breeds of bees were offered by the breeders and what years in the ads. I did this many years ago and was surprised at how many time African honeybees were imported into the USA and sold to the general beekeeping public in those early years. So if genetics of a race that was not imported into the USA or imported once or twice shows up in the DNA sequence of Apis Mellifera honeybees in the America's, then you can figure that this is a very old lineage. Old enough to possibly predate even Columbus or imported just right after his arrival. I am sure that the history of man and bee are not totally known and carved in stone. Man, because we are explorers and the honeybee, because it was one of the creatures that we have taken with us for food resources when we go exploring. I am sure that far into the future, Mark's and WLC's descendents will be debating on who brought honeybees to the Mars Colony first. TED


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## WLC

Ted:

Thanks for the info. I was simply going to use a standard COI barcode for hymenopterans, blast the sequence, and then construct a phlogenetic tree.

But, hey, I'd probably have to ask Beltsville about any COI sequences from archived specimens.

What's interesting to note is that I can go to the AMNH to check on what they have archived there.

I'm doing a barcoding project anyway.


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## sqkcrk

Ted Kretschmann said:


> I am sure that far into the future, Mark's and WLC's descendents will be debating on who brought honeybees to the Mars Colony first. TED


Even tho I don't know the name of the Space Ship that first took bees to Sky Lab, it wasn't The Discovery. I was disappointed when it wasn't, because "by this ship and The Discovery" is documentation of the first shipment of bees to Jamestown. And I still haven't found out the name of "this ship", yet.


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## hpm08161947

sqkcrk said:


> Even tho I don't know the name of the Space Ship that first took bees to Sky Lab, it wasn't The Discovery..


I'd sure hate to get this thread off topic .... but just what did they do with those bees on SkyLab?


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