ABSTRACT
Honey bees are indigenous to Africa and since honey seems to have been the only source of sweetness known to humans until recent times, one may be fairly certain that there has been a very long history of humans and their ancestors interacting with bees. Drones of the scutellata bee are dark in color, whereas occasional yellow drones still appear in that population, indicating that at least a minor part of the European genome may have persisted in the parental scutellata gene pool. According to F. G. Smith et al., gene flow from the feral African bees to managed European apiaries is well documented. This gene flow occurs mainly via the mating of European queens with the far more numerous African drones, and to a small extent by the direct takeover of European colonies by African swarms.
