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 facility of their management. A. m. ligustica has dominated the hobby and

 commercial honey bee market in the USA for over a hundred years.

 It is likely that the importation of honey bees from Europe to the USA

 resulted in a reduction in variation, or genetic bottleneck, relative to the parent

 populations (Sheppard 1988). The identity and number of variants and alleles

 at locus 178 in the subspecies imported to the USA for beekeeping have not

 been determined but may be greater than those found in USA drones. Variants

 and alleles detected in USA drones likely represent a subset of the variability

 at this locus in European honey bee subspecies. The emphasis on vitality and

 productivity in beekeeping and queen-rearing practices has resulted in some

 degree of homogenization of European races in the USA.

 Documentation of the identity and numbers of European honey bee

subspecies imported into the neotropics appears to be limited, and commercial

and feral populations have not been thoroughly surveyed in the past (Kent

1988; Taylor 1977). It has been reported that the same races of European

bees were introduced to North America and the neotropics, although the

introductions occurred at different times (Goncalves 1974; Goncalves, Stort &

DeJong 1991; Hellmich & Rinderer 1991; Kent 1988; Kerr, DeLeon & Dardo

1982; Lobo, Del Lama & Mestriner 1989; Rinderer & Hellmich 1991). The

number of African queens imported and released in Brazil is not clear (Kerr

1967; Rinderer, Oldroyd & Sheppard 1993; Smith 1991) nor the number of

drones with which each was mated, but the introduction probably resulted in