[Kieck]

I believe one of the main reasons is the highly limited genetic profile of many of the commonly available bees. -Raziel

I think the genetic diversity of commonly available bees in the U. S. is far greater than is suspected.

Let's get into the phylogeny of bees for just a second.

Africanized honey bees are hybrids, but Apis mellifera scutellata is the subspecies in most cases that gives the bees the "Africanized" name.

Subspecies or races of bees are more similar to each other than they are to bees of other subspecies. That is to say, more genetic diversity is likely to occur in very few bees of different subspecies than in many bees of a single subspecies. So, a collection of bees of A. m. mellifera and A. m. caucasica and A. m. carnica would have greater collective diversity than a group of strictly A. m. scutellata.

1. German, English and Spanish bees, which are the first bees brought in from Europe as early as the 1600's .
2. Italian breeds, this is the most commonly found and many of the other breeds are derivates, like russians and part of the all american and many others. They came in the 1800' till the present.
3. Carniolian breeds.
4. Buckfast. Which is partly italian... -Raziel

Yep. We've genes from a lot of different subspecies here. We have AHB in this country, too, living in some of the predominant areas for queen and package bee production. Even some subspecies that you didn't include show up in DNA surveys of bees. I don't think a large-scale lack of genetic diversity is the problem.