# Genetics



## adamf (Jan 28, 2006)

Just for clarity, color heredity is not clearly understood in honey bee genetics yet.

You could have black "Italian type bees, " and yellow "Carniolan type bees". The type of build-up and brood nest specific queens keep is more indicative of "Italian" or "Carniolan" phenotype then worker coloration. Certainly, if one gets their bees from a breeder interested in selecting for color, "Italians" will look light with bands and "Carniolans" will be darker, with bands--etc. etc.

One of the best aspects when making 1000's of queens is seeing the amazing range of coloration in the queens and their workers.

This season, I've seen very light, "Italian" type queens that head colonies with a completely Carniolian type brood nest. Also, fascinating is observing a "run" of one particular color in virgins, before the coloration changes over to a different looking virgin--perhaps due to the sperm from a specific drone, being utilized from the spermatheca, chain-like, before it runs out and another drone's sperm kicks in.

Adam Finkelstein
www.vpqueenbees.com


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## sevenmmm (Mar 5, 2011)

adamf said:


> One of the best aspects when making 1000's of queens is seeing the amazing range of coloration in the queens and their workers.
> 
> --perhaps due to the sperm from a specific drone, being utilized from the spermatheca, chain-like, before it runs out and another drone's sperm kicks in.
> 
> ...


Very interesting.


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## Alex Wild (May 15, 2011)

Most of our North American bees are mutts to some extent, no matter what breeders sell them as. 

The "Italian" bees here certainly aren't the same genetic mix as the originally named _Apis mellifera ligustica_ from Europe. That's the beauty of a single, variable species. A few generations of open mating swallows them all into a single large gene pool. 

Breeders can reselect lines with particular characteristics, perhaps reminiscent of the original Italians or Carniolans, even containing some of the original alleles. But these categories are just illusions over the long term so long as the various types of bees happily mate with each other.


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## heaflaw (Feb 26, 2007)

This is very interesting. I've kept around 15 hives of Italians for about 15 years. I usually see a few hives with some dark workers in them every year. This year I hived a swarm that had a solid black queen (didn't notice stripes). The only difference I have seen in the hives with some dark bees is that they are more defensive. I have always assumed they are remnants of the old German black bees. Am I probably correct?


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## rrussell6870 (May 14, 2009)

Adam is correct. The color traits are more commonly linked to the location of origin, most likely caused by natural selection and adaptation to predation, light sources, forage types, and average temperature ranges... 

In colder climates, darker bees may tend to survive better, thus promoting the darker color in the gene pool of that area... just as lighter colored bees may tend to be less effected by longer periods of intense sunlight, and so the bees of such an area may adapt to a lighter color...

This is not always a constant however... let's say an area that has a long period of hot sun, but also has a large population of bee eating birds and brush or timber covers a significant portion of the environment... in this scenario, the bees with darker colors may survive and thrive better than those that are of a lighter color, simply because the darker bees have a better camouflage and thus can be less effected by the bird predation, making them more able to forage and reproduce more productively than the lighter bees... so the areas gene pool will become more and more dark over time...

The same is true for the natural size and nest defense of a strain as well... 

Every aspect of the traits that a strain possesses is the result of the long term development of the situation that the bees were in... 

Hope this helps.


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