Talk:Carniolan honey bee
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Carniolan honey bee is within the scope of WikiProject Beekeeping, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to beekeeping on Wikipedia. To participate simply edit the article and, if you wish, list yourself at our members list. Don't hesitate to ask questions! |
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[P0M]: Somebody put a remark into the article about whether Apis mellifera carnia is to be considered a "race" or a "subspecies." See the subspecies Wiki article for further discussion. Both these terms are a bit messy, but for somewhat different reasons. Actually there are two kinds of problems, and the two are related to each other. One problem is whether there is a discernible group of bees that are clearly Apis mellifera carnica and another group that are clearly Apis mellifera ligustica -- "with only a narrow hybridization zone between them", or whether there is in fact a gradual shift from one kind to the other (a "clinal" change). There is a very clear difference between either of those two and Apis mellifera cypria because the Mediterranean Sea provides a forbidding barrier between Cyprus and the mainland. One of the experts who works on the spider article occasionally says that the more clearly you define the membership of a supposed subspecies the fewer individuals actually fit into it. It's easy to miss the real import of this idea. You could end up with a few colonies of "true Italians" and a few colonies of "true Carniolians" and very, very many colonies of "neither Italian nor Carnolians but some kind of mixed-breed whatever-they-are bees." That's one problem.
[P0M]: The other problem is just with the word "race." As it is applied by biologists, it is just a synonym for "subspecies," but it carries lots of baggage because it is regularly applied to human beings despite the fact that the biologists tell us that there is only one extant subspecies of human beings, Homo sapiens sapiens. If a race is a subspecies, then there is only one race, but many humans seem to want to talk about infra-subspecific differentiations of humans, e.g., the 19th century division of humans into Orientals, Caucasians, Africans... See the talk page for Race and follow through the last several years of debates on the subject if you really want to see some trenchant position holding.
[P0M]: I took out the statement "There is still some scientific debate if the Carniolans represent a subspecies or a race." It may not have been intended to say so, but it is easy to read it as though the question is whether to call the Carniolans a race or to call them a subspecies. Since the two words are synonyms, maybe the intention was to question whether bees ought to be divided into subspecies the way they are now. I think the average well-informed reader will go to the articles on race and on subspecies if s/he is interested in this kind of debate. Wheat is more likely is that the reader knows that there are bees that get called Carniolians and simply wants to know what they look like, whether they are commercially important, whether they are dangerous to humans minding their own business, etc. P0M 10:44, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)
