Don, what we all could have done with a bit of that wisdom in hindsight back them. And imagine how much more wisdom in hindsight we're going to experience in the future! LOL
Tropheus76, Australian vegetation evolved without European Bees and their behavioural patterns. So there are a lot of flowers that aren't 'designed' to give access to the European Bees which, being aggressive creatures, tend to tear the flowers apart preventing fertilising and allowing fungus and other pathogens in that rot the flowers. A lot of plants, like Eucapypts for example, don't have that problem, but for those that do it's disaster. For the honey industry feral European Bees are a risk for the spread of any disease outbreak with little chance of control. They would prefer to have them all under complete control (ie kept by people). Environmentalists see them as an ecological disaster. And their concern goes further than just flowering plants. A lot of Australian trees develop hollows naturally which become nests and shelters for native animals. European Bees tend to take over these hollows and drive out the native occupants. Australia has the greatest diversity of parrots in the world and they nest predominantly in tree hollows. There's a specific threat to them, with deforestation taking out many potential hollows, and European Bees occupying many of those that remain. You should be able to get an idea of the picture, nothing is ever really straight forward.
