# Distinguishing between Carniolan and Caucasian honey bees



## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

I was told by David at Winter's Apiaries that the Caucasian bee drones have brown hair on their thoraxes, Carniolans would have white hairs. Hurray! One way to distinguish between these two dark colored bees!


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## e-spice (Sep 21, 2013)

The main difference is:

If you find yourself removing the inner cover with a standard hive tool they're Carniolans.
If you find yourself removing the inner cover with a 6-foot pry bar and/or a jackhammer then they're Caucasians.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

With Caucasians you often cannot let go of a frame. It sticks to your hand like flypaper... Caucasians tend to be more silver than brown in my experience.


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Yes, I have noticed our suspected Caucasian bees propolize a whole lot more than other bees. They will make a curtain of propolis at the entrance which I love. I have noticed that the suspected Caucasian hives we have have greyer haired bees with more distinct bands than the "carniolan" bees that I think I have. Of course I am still not sure which hives have which subspecies in them, but am getting an idea by just a glance at the worker bees general appearance. They don't particularly go through winter well, which is odd from what I read about them doing well in Siberia.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

HaplozygousNut said:


> ...... Caucasian ....... They don't particularly go through winter well, which is odd from what I read about them doing well in Siberia.


Caucasians never have been known for good wintering (the LONG wintering like Russian/Siberian wintering version, to be clear)
Well known fact.
Check your sources.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

HaplozygousNut said:


> ....
> People say that Caucasian bees come from an area that is cold. I have read that around the Black Sea Coast where the Caucasian bees are from is actually a mild winter area with a cool summer (most likely influence from the sea:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humid_subtropical_climate).
> 
> Of course higher altitudes make it colder. But I was wondering exactly how high up in the mountains are these Caucasian bees from in the Republic of Georgia. As you go east away from the Black Sea to the eastern Caucasus mountains, the climate gets dryer and colder during the winter (harsher climate). Armenian bees are from this area in the eastern part of the Caucasus mountain range. So I assume Armenian bees are more cold hardy than Caucasian bees, no?


Grey Caucasians are from highlands - adapted to cool and very unstable summers with unstable poor flows.
But - NOT adapted to long winters.
They can take the cold; they can NOT take the *long *cold.
Armenians are from the adjacent lowlands (pretty much the same latitude) - pretty much a subtropical bee and thus the adaptations for very mild winters and long, hot summers.


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## Fusion_power (Jan 14, 2005)

The mixed genetics here in the U.S. make it impossible to determine much about the race of a given colony. Only where some effort has been put into breeding and maintaining pure lines is it possible to make a statement about genetics. This to say that I cull any colony that propolizes excessively and any that are too aggressive.

That said, most bees will build a propolis curtain over the entrance of the colony under some conditions.

As MB said, true Caucasians can't be opened without getting your hands gummed up with propolis. I had some back in the 1980s and promised never again.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

Michael Bush said:


> *With Caucasians you often cannot let go of a frame. It sticks to your hand like flypaper.*.. Caucasians tend to be more silver than brown in my experience.


Well, I got bees that the frames stick to my fingers.
NO - I don't have Caucasians.
I just got mutts.


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## hagane (Aug 15, 2015)

This is a neat thread. 

I'd had similar thoughts. 

Maybe because in the US the strains of bees aren't as pure and are more mixed its hard to tell the difference between anything anymore. Like recently people will put up videos on Youtube and they'll say stuff like check out my Carniolan bees. 

And I can't tell the difference. They are holding up golden yellow bees that look more Italian than Carniolan. 

So I hope people put up more threads like this.


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Aha!! That is what I suspected GregV. Everybody says Caucasian bees are from a cold winter area, but from what I found on the Koppen Climate Classification system is that where the Caucasian bees are from on the Black sea coast, is actually a mild winter climate, but with cool summers (maritime influence from the Black sea I would think.). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Köppe...:Köppen-Geiger_Climate_Classification_Map.png

Fusion_Power very few of my colonies make a curtain of propolis all across the entrance of their hives. I have some colonies with dark bees that consistently do this every fall (I suspect a good percentage of Caucasian in them). 

It does make it very hard to tell which subspecies has which traits because we have a mix of bees here in America. Has anyone noticed that the lighter coloration of Italian bees seems dominant over the darker coloration when breeding queens? From a dusky golden queen with a dark tipped abdomen I can get almost all black queens from her offspring (so I suspect she had more carniolan or caucasian hidden in her genes than I could see, her abdomen being mostly light brown.).


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

HaplozygousNut said:


> Fusion_Power very few of my colonies make a curtain of propolis all across the entrance of their hives. I have some colonies with dark bees that consistently do this every fall (I suspect a good percentage of Caucasian in them).
> 
> .


Also pay attention to the honey cappings.
The Caucasian subs will do the wet caps.
So presence of some wet caps tells of presence of some Caucasian blood.
The original Far Eastern Russians have some Caucasian blood in them, to be clear.
In all, talking of pure breed is a misnomer for most all practical purposes (when removed from the geographic origin).


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Hmm... I have heard that about the wet cappings for the Caucasian bees. I will pay closer attention to that when I breed our colonies, so that I might find them consistently doing more wet cappings for the dark bees we have come up every now and then that propolize a lot. 

GregV I have read from this website below about the Russian bees that were brought into the United States were Macedonian honey bees in their morphometric traits. 
https://beekeep.info/a-treatise-on-...nt/all-bees-are-not-alike/russian-honey-bees/

And here on this Russian website it says that the bees in the Russian Far East are Macedonian honey bees. https://sites.google.com/site/ukrainskaastepnaa/ucenye-ob-ukrainskoj-stepnoj-porode-pcel/ukr

But from the Foley's Russian bee website it says that Russian bees that were brought into the United States from Primorye were mostly Caucasian with some Carniolan and Italian mixed in. http://www.russianbee.com/primorsky.htm


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

GregV said:


> Grey Caucasians are from highlands - adapted to cool and very unstable summers with unstable poor flows.
> But - NOT adapted to long winters.
> They can take the cold; they can NOT take the *long *cold.
> Armenians are from the adjacent lowlands (pretty much the same latitude) - pretty much a subtropical bee and thus the adaptations for very mild winters and long, hot summers.


You are not talking about the Iranian bees (Apis mellifera meda) are you? As you go away from the Black sea the winters get colder temperatures and dryer. I thought that was where the Armenian bees lived in the mountains. On some range maps of the subspecies of honeybees they show the Caucasian bee going across the whole Caucasus mountains, but this range map here shows that the Armenian bees are at the center of the Caucasus mountains east of the Caucasian bees and Caucasian bees around the Black Sea coast west of the Armenian bees:
https://entomology.lsu.edu/assets/theplaceofhoneybeesintheworld.pdf (page 11)


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

HaplozygousNut said:


> I was told by David at Winter's Apiaries that the Caucasian bee drones have brown hair on their thoraxes, Carniolans would have white hairs. Hurray! One way to distinguish between these two dark colored bees!


This picture of German black bees may give an idea on how the hairs on the drone of Caucasian bee thorax would be different from drones of Carniolan bees:
https://adbkabees.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/zwarte-koningin-dar-werkster.jpg?w=700&h=

I was told that Caucasian bee drones have darker thorax hairs than Carniolans. Though Caucasian bees may not be as extreme as the German black bee drones in the photo above.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

HaplozygousNut said:


> Hmm... I have heard that about the wet cappings for the Caucasian bees. I will pay closer attention to that when I breed our colonies, so that I might find them consistently doing more wet cappings for the dark bees we have come up every now and then that propolize a lot.
> 
> GregV I have read from this website below about the Russian bees that were brought into the United States were Macedonian honey bees in their morphometric traits.
> https://beekeep.info/a-treatise-on-...nt/all-bees-are-not-alike/russian-honey-bees/
> ...


According to my sources, the Far Eastern Russian bee is a mix of - Macedonica (Ukrainian bee), Mellifera (Dark Euro bee), Caucasica (Grey Caucasian), and Ligustica (Italian).
Some early settles from Ukraine and Western Russia brought their bees along - whatever bees they had.
Later, the Soviet state brought Caucasians and Italians into the mix.

Keep in mind that the region itself is large enough (just like Wisconsin) and diverse enough that the are two main sub-types of the Far Eastern Russian bee has formed - Northern Forest Uplands (dark bee) an Southern Grassy Lowlands (yellow bee). The entire place is largely defined by forested mountain ridge going North-South, parallel to the Pacific Ocean, and so there will be many variations of the bees due to the local micro-geography.

This being said, the actual source of queens imported into the USA could have contained larger proportions of Macedonica blood - entirely possible.
They only got the bees from one particular place where they had developed some relationships - I am pretty sure.
They did not really study the bees across the region and not done cross-regional sampling, for whatever reason.

In any case, the true Far Eastern Russian bee is a mutt and considered a primitive sub-species just as of late (still debated due to its very young age).
Depending on exact bee yard and exact swarm, you can get any random bee make up (similar to the US).
To say that the Russian bee is the same as Ukrainian bee - ... is not accurate at the least (especially from the people who supposedly know their stuff).
The Far Eastern Russian bee is NOT Ukrainian bee.
To look at the Ukrainian bee - go directly to Ukraine.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

HaplozygousNut said:


> You are not talking about the Iranian bees (Apis mellifera meda) are you? As you go away from the Black sea the winters get colder temperatures and dryer. I thought that was where the Armenian bees lived in the mountains. On some range maps of the subspecies of honeybees they show the Caucasian bee going across the whole Caucasus mountains, but this range map here shows that the Armenian bees are at the center of the Caucasus mountains east of the Caucasian bees and Caucasian bees around the Black Sea coast west of the Armenian bees:
> https://entomology.lsu.edu/assets/theplaceofhoneybeesintheworld.pdf (page 11)


Not talking of A. m. meda at all.
We are talking of Apis mellifera *remipes*.

OK, here - google translate this:
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Жёлтая_кавказская_пчела
There is sub-species of Yellow Caucasian bee.
In turn it is divided into three sub-populations; one of these sub-populations IS the Armenian bee.

Keep in mind, ALL of these Caucasian bees co-exist at once over the same large territory AND separated only by the local latitudes AND they cross-mate too when they overlap.
The Grey bees are highland bees; the Yellow bees are lowland bees; but they obviously overlap as the micro-geography changes up and down.
Also keep in mind, the Caucasus are high mountains up to 5,642 metres (18,510 feet) - and so the "lowlands" but those standards are just simply higher than my entire state.
To compare, the US Rocky mountains only go up a tad above 14,000 feet; so you get the idea.

So, their lowlands would be above and beyond of most of our highlands here.
So yes, of course by our standards, their lowland bees live in the mountains (except the very edge by the Black Sea).


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

Here is a useful quote about the Far Eastern Russian bee:


> *Печатка мёда самая разнообразная - от светлой ("сухой") через целый ряд переходных форм до тёмной ("мокрой").*


It says:


> Honey capping is most variable - from bright ("dry") to dark ("wet") with many different transitional forms in between.


Digest it for a minute.
Regardless of the appearance of the bee (the morphometry), the capping behavior shows too well - this is an inconsistent mutt (just like lots of local bee populations in the US).

What is represented in the USA - several original queens coming from a single administrative district (compatible to a US county)
From memory, without double-checking - here is the exact source locality - ".....*пчёлы Лазовского района Приморского края с однородной серой окраской*".
The uniformed grey coloring suggests these could be interpreted in the US later as if A.m.macedonica, by the looks of them.

Source (I find this paper a very good review of the current status of the Far Eastern Bee and worth translating for those who are interested):
"Зимостойкость и медовая продуктивность дальневосточных пчел в различных природно-климатических зонах Приморского края диплом 2011 по ботанике и сельскому хозяйству , Дипломная из Ботаника"
https://www.docsity.com/ru/zimostoy...imaticheskih-zonah-primorskogo-kraya/1802980/

Anyway, people selling the Russians in the US (not I) should be educating the customers of the entire story if they are well informed and honest enough.


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## John_M (Aug 13, 2019)

Regarding the climate in the caucaus region. In an around Sochi there are tea plantings. In March they showed some winter damage but not much at lower altitudes. I was suprised to find some tea fields high in the mountains north of the city, although they showed much more winter damage. Georgia is between the Caspian and Black Seas and so has weather moderated by both. On the coast of Crimea, in Sevastopal and Yalta, Palm trees have been planted and most seem to survive. In late December they were replacing trees that had been damaged. In early March in Sochi the weather was considerably warmer then here in New York (upstate),only a bit of snow in shaded north facing areas high in the mountains north of the city, and it was considerably warmer than Moscow. 
It's probably colder in the northern caucauses but I doubt that it gets as cold as we get here in New York. Russian's tend to be overly proud of how brutal their winters are, but in my experience of northern European Russia it is no colder than here and they don't get as much snow as here, at least in my experience. Siberia is another story, it's brutal.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

John_M said:


> Regarding the climate in the caucaus region. In an around Sochi there are tea plantings. In March they showed some winter damage but not much at lower altitudes. I was suprised to find some tea fields high in the mountains north of the city, although they showed much more winter damage. Georgia is between the Caspian and Black Seas and so has weather moderated by both. On the coast of Crimea, in Sevastopal and Yalta, Palm trees have been planted and most seem to survive. In late December they were replacing trees that had been damaged. In early March in Sochi the weather was considerably warmer then here in New York (upstate),only a bit of snow in shaded north facing areas high in the mountains north of the city, and it was considerably warmer than Moscow.
> It's probably colder in the northern caucauses but I doubt that it gets as cold as we get here in New York. *Russian's tend to be overly proud of how brutal their winters are,* but in my experience of northern European Russia it is no colder than here and they don't get as much snow as here, at least in my experience. Siberia is another story, it's brutal.


Speaking of the Caucasions - like I said - the differences in the latitudes are so severe just over the short distances that you can see palm trees and snow standing in the single spot. Subtropics and alpine meadows within the same visible range.
Naturally, the eco conditions very a lot. And bees.


Speaking of the winters...- you should take a train and travel West to East in that region. In Winter.
Pretty soon you will notice that traveling along the same latitude produces stark differences (no snow changes to lots of snow overnight) - the deeper into the continent you move - the more severe/more continental the climate becomes (not surprising - the same phenomena in the USA is also visible).
So, you just need to know the context and not mix the facts up. 

Russians of many regions are not exaggerating much.
But you must know the geography and related context.
Some places are cold; some are not too cold; some places have terrible, cold and rainy, useless summers; other places have subtropical summers - the place is bigger than the USA by expanse.
The Russians non-stop bicker between themselves on this exact topic.


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## John_M (Aug 13, 2019)

When I closed my business I wanted some time to myself so I lived in St Petersburg for 6 months. Traveled to Russia many times previously and to many areas. It was just what I needed at the time. From my balcony I could see St Issacs dome and the spire of Peter and Paul. I was a 15 minute walk to the gulf of Finland.

As far as bees, I'll stick with carnolians, at least for now.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

John_M said:


> When I closed my business I wanted some time to myself so I lived in St Petersburg for 6 months. Traveled to Russia many times previously and to many areas. It was just what I needed at the time. From my balcony I could see St Issacs dome and the spire of Peter and Paul. I was a 15 minute walk to the gulf of Finland.
> 
> As far as bees, I'll stick with carnolians, at least for now.


Very good.
You should have climbed the St Issacs dome to the top - I have.

If you visited the Hermitage for several days and took your time to do it - about the best deal you have gotten from St. Pete, IMO.
Anyways, St. Pete is not the coldest place in Russia by far (but weather overall about the crappiest or close to it, be it summer or winter).


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Wow, that is a lot of good information GregV. Thank you for clearing the mystery about A. m. remipes. I always assumed A. m. remipes was a synonym of the A. m. armeniaca or of A. m. caucasia because remipes was listed in the same range as the other subspecies that are better known or more information about online. It is that the altitudes that keep these distinct subspecies apart in the same area.

About Apis mellifera pomonella. Here on Wikipedia it says that it is a synonym of Apis mellifera caucasia. Is this true? Were A. m. caucasia introduced to the Tien Shan mountains? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucasian_honey_bee


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

John_M said:


> When I closed my business I wanted some time to myself so I lived in St Petersburg for 6 months. Traveled to Russia many times previously and to many areas. It was just what I needed at the time. From my balcony I could see St Issacs dome and the spire of Peter and Paul. I was a 15 minute walk to the gulf of Finland.
> 
> As far as bees, I'll stick with carnolians, at least for now.


It could be that we have Carpathians, and Ukrainian bees here in the US, also, along with the Carniolan bees. That would make things more complicated on identifying which is which, them being similar kinds of bees. I read once in an article written by Susan Cobey in a bee journal that the bees in southern Poland were Carniolan bees. That is the Carpathian mountains she was talking about it seems to me. That would be the Carpathian bees. So I wonder if Susan Cobey has brought in those Carpathian bees as a part of her imports of sperm for her New World Carniolan breeding project thinking they were the same subspecies as Carniolans.

It seems like Canada has or are importing Carpathian and Ukrainian bees:
https://www.niagarabeeway.com/store/p24/Carpathian_Queen_Honey_Bee.html
https://cutisproject.org/en/news/bee-exports/


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

HaplozygousNut said:


> Wow, that is a lot of good information GregV. Thank you for clearing the mystery about A. m. remipes. I always assumed A. m. remipes was a synonym of the A. m. armeniaca or of A. m. caucasia because remipes was listed in the same range as the other subspecies that are better known or more information about online. It is that the altitudes that keep these distinct subspecies apart in the same area.
> 
> About Apis mellifera pomonella. Here on Wikipedia it says that it is a synonym of Apis mellifera caucasia. Is this true? Were A. m. caucasia introduced to the Tien Shan mountains? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucasian_honey_bee


I don't know of Apis mellifera pomonella - don't care to google right now.
Speaking of the Uzbekistan/Kirghistan/Kazakhstan - the Caucasians were widely imported there during Soviet times.
Now being independent and somewhat isolated, I imagine they should have some very localized populations of bees developed (probably pretty darn good bees).

Here, some of my worst bees doing capping like this.
Looks like some Caucasian blood is mixed in - almost all solid wet cap.


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

John_M said:


> Regarding the climate in the caucaus region. In an around Sochi there are tea plantings. In March they showed some winter damage but not much at lower altitudes. I was suprised to find some tea fields high in the mountains north of the city, although they showed much more winter damage. Georgia is between the Caspian and Black Seas and so has weather moderated by both. On the coast of Crimea, in Sevastopal and Yalta, Palm trees have been planted and most seem to survive. In late December they were replacing trees that had been damaged. In early March in Sochi the weather was considerably warmer then here in New York (upstate),only a bit of snow in shaded north facing areas high in the mountains north of the city, and it was considerably warmer than Moscow.
> It's probably colder in the northern caucauses but I doubt that it gets as cold as we get here in New York. Russian's tend to be overly proud of how brutal their winters are, but in my experience of northern European Russia it is no colder than here and they don't get as much snow as here, at least in my experience. Siberia is another story, it's brutal.


People do not commonly know this, but as it gets colder it tends to get dryer, so less snow when winter gets colder. So more snow does not actually mean that it is a colder climate, it could mean the opposite... Dry snow is dusty/powdery and light in weight and will not make good snowmen or snowballs. But in Canada even though it is cold I see that on the Koppen Climate map that it is moist while Siberia is dry. I guess you can't predict that colder means less snow for sure either.


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

GregV said:


> I don't know of Apis mellifera pomonella - don't care to google right now.
> Speaking of the Uzbekistan/Kirghistan/Kazakhstan - the Caucasians were widely imported there during Soviet times.
> Now being independent and somewhat isolated, I imagine they should have some very localized populations of bees developed (probably pretty darn good bees).
> 
> ...


Same with the several colonies we have that I think have good percentage of Caucasian, all the cappings are "wet".  Still they are not full Caucasians because of lighter coloration mixed in the workers, and during strong nectar flows instead of syrup feeding they might make "dry" cappings also, I will have to see next year how they cap, dry or wet. Mating in summer after our nectar flows are finished may mate more Caucasian bees... will have to do it more to see if it is consistent.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

HaplozygousNut said:


> ..... as it gets colder it tends to get dryer, so less snow when winter gets colder. .....


Yes.
Inner Russia gets more continental - less snow and lower temperatures.


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

It seems to me that the black bees we have that propolize a lot (suspected caucasians) are more shiny, having more contrasted whiter grey bands. 

While the more common black bees we have with carniolan traits (dry cappings for one) are brown haired and seem fuzzier, with little shininess in between bands, though browner hair than the lead grey suspected caucasian bees. 

That is odd. I read that Caucasian bees have thick or thicker bands than Carniolans on Dave Cushman's website: it says "very broad" "much hair" on the 4th tergite for Caucasian bees while just "broad" "much hair" for Carniolan. (http://www.dave-cushman.net/bee/morphometry.html) I need to take pictures to show the differences between colonies with more extreme Caucasian traits compared to a colonies with more extreme Carniolan traits, but our camera got damaged in a house fire. My father is going to buy another good camera for us.

I will see whether in spring these bees I think are Caucasian will be sluggish in build-up. This might be a good thing though. They might not make the most honey, but this might be a good way to try cheating in breeding a bee that doesn't swarm...


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

HaplozygousNut said:


> It seems to me that the black bees we have that propolize a lot (suspected caucasians) are more shiny, having more contrasted whiter grey bands.
> 
> While the more common black bees we have with carniolan traits (dry cappings for one) are brown haired and seem fuzzier, with little shininess in between bands, though browner hair than the lead grey suspected caucasian bees.
> 
> ...


I would not pay attention too much to the appearance anymore.
It is melting pot and does not much matter here and now (US).

My #2 resource hive propolized the hack out of (just wow).
Good deal I am not commercial (the commercials would probably requeen these bees).
By appearance just simple mutts, yellowing some.
Nothing Caucasian in them by the looks.

I will continue saying this - outside of the Caucasus region, there are no Caucasian bees (UNLESS you got a direct queen shipment from them - you'll have one generation maybe).
It is impossible and I am not sure why this idea does not get traction.
The geographic location defines the local bee. All it is.


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

GregV said:


> I would not pay attention too much to the appearance anymore.
> It is melting pot and does not much matter here and now (US).
> 
> My #2 resource hive propolized the hack out of (just wow).
> ...



I am curious to how extreme your #2 colony propolizes? When the bottom board has a summer entrance of over an inch in height these suspected caucasians I wrote about that I have had in the past made a curtain of propolis at the entrance. The curtain of propolis curving inward into the colony, leaving a beespace so that the curtain of propolis is not quite touching the bottom board, like bees building comb. Do any of your hives do this in autumn GregV? 

I have bred bees that were particularly light and those bees do propilize more than our common brown mutts. I was breeding from an aggressive colony and got some unusually light bees (out of all our bees here in NC). Some of the workers are so light that there is only one black segment at the abdomen tip or almost so. They are very aggressive bees and paler yellow. I have seen a picture of what I read were true/pure Cyprian bees, and the Cyprian bee workers uniformly had black tipped abdomens with light yellow bodies, but I can't remember exactly what they looked like in that picture. 

I believe I could breed for the Caucasian bee traits from our local mutts and breed a bee that is almost pure Caucasian bee, but I might need to be able to do instrumental insemination to help. I have been thinking of how to make the tools needed since it is expensive to buy the equipment. I was told a 3D printer may be able to make the small diameter needle and some other parts. 

The darker bees with these Caucasian traits tend to supersede their queens during our early nectar flow in February, so it is disappointing to loose the queens before I breed from them. They also seem to occasionally supersede during the summer, maybe especially if they get an unusual short nectar flow from maybe soybean or cotton, and soon after the nectar flow is over the virgin queen goes out on a mating flight and gets killed by the workers balling her when she comes back from her mating flight. This is hard to deal with because if you don't catch the dying queenless colony early enough, wax moths can eat the comb of a large colony that dies this way. I have not had a lot of times this has happened, but I have witnessed consistent balling of queens when coming back from mating flights during the summer dearth, weak/small colonies though will successfully mate their queens during the summer dearth.

Subspecies of bees are bees that are different genetically, and so are not just locally adapted forms of the same kind of bee. It is true that there are different locally adapted forms within a subspecies of bee. I think it is important to preserve the genetics of these different subspecies of bees. Fortunately the German black bees in Great Britain, from what I have read, are coming back naturally, probably because they are the most suited for that region/climate. http://www.northumbrianbees.co.uk/a...-dna-testing-to-establish-honey-bee-ancestry/


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

HaplozygousNut said:


> I am curious to how extreme your #2 colony propolizes? When the bottom board has a summer entrance of over an inch in height these suspected caucasians I wrote about that I have had in the past made a curtain of propolis at the entrance. The curtain of propolis curving inward into the colony, leaving a beespace so that the curtain of propolis is not quite touching the bottom board, like bees building comb. Do any of your hives do this in autumn GregV?


No curtains here.
Most all my bees are now reduced to only one-two 0.5' round entrance (by me).







No need for them to do the same; they are busy unplugging themselves to the comfort levels.

What they do, however, is to completely plug any irregularities between the top bars (common with me) and heavy layer on the burlap, thus creating a non-permeable ceiling.
Here are summer pictures - not too bad yet.















In pre-winter this propolis ceiling is so heavy, I am reluctant to even break into it.
I wish all the propolis amounted to all kinds of anti-pest/anti-infection outcomes and crazy resistant bees - but pretty sure all that is non-sense.
This is all about plugging the holes shut with natural cement.
I need to harvest some and make tincture already.


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

HaplozygousNut said:


> I am curious to how extreme your #2 colony propolizes? When the bottom board has a summer entrance of over an inch in height these suspected caucasians I wrote about that I have had in the past made a curtain of propolis at the entrance. The curtain of propolis curving inward into the colony, leaving a beespace so that the curtain of propolis is not quite touching the bottom board, like bees building comb. Do any of your hives do this in autumn GregV?
> 
> I have bred bees that were particularly light and those bees do propilize more than our common brown mutts. I was breeding from an aggressive colony and got some unusually light bees (out of all our bees here in NC). Some of the workers are so light that there is only one black segment at the abdomen tip or almost so. They are very aggressive bees and paler yellow. I have seen a picture of what I read were true/pure Cyprian bees, and the Cyprian bee workers uniformly had black tipped abdomens with light yellow bodies, but I can't remember exactly what they looked like in that picture.


A couple pictures of the aggressive golden colored bees that I have (once I saw about 6 or so bees at this entrance all golden with black tips on abdomen which was stunning:













They are always on the alert with wings outwards instead of folded when at rest, like from what I read about African bees do, too. The more percentage of golden bees that the colony has the more aggressive the colony is, so I think it might be Cyprian bees. Also, I thought I saw a picture of pure Cyprian bees a few years ago (can't remember where on the internet...) and they, from the best of my memory were stunningly golden with black tipped abdomens.


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## JRG13 (May 11, 2012)

HaplozygousNut said:


> It could be that we have Carpathians, and Ukrainian bees here in the US, also, along with the Carniolan bees. That would make things more complicated on identifying which is which, them being similar kinds of bees. I read once in an article written by Susan Cobey in a bee journal that the bees in southern Poland were Carniolan bees. That is the Carpathian mountains she was talking about it seems to me. That would be the Carpathian bees. So I wonder if Susan Cobey has brought in those Carpathian bees as a part of her imports of sperm for her New World Carniolan breeding project thinking they were the same subspecies as Carniolans.
> 
> It seems like Canada has or are importing Carpathian and Ukrainian bees:
> https://www.niagarabeeway.com/store/p24/Carpathian_Queen_Honey_Bee.html
> https://cutisproject.org/en/news/bee-exports/


I tried to source some Carpathian stocks from Niagara this year, but the guy was more into wanting to ship a truckload of bees for whatever reason... not sure why me paying for the inspection certificate was such a big issue to have some queens shipped like Ferguson's...


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## Juhani Lunden (Oct 3, 2013)

GregV said:


> Grey Caucasians are from highlands - adapted to cool and very unstable summers with unstable poor flows.
> But - NOT adapted to long winters.
> They can take the cold; they can NOT take the *long *cold.


+1
In Finland a lot of beekeepers tried Caucasian bees in the early 1970`s. The result was poor wintering. The spring development was reported to be poor too. Too slow for the Finnish vegetation. 


Ruttner writes about the differences of Caucasica and Carnica: "With eye not possible to make difference." 

Then he writes in detail about Cubital index as the best means to distinguish the crosses too, when pure average is by Caucasica 2,16, while it is with Carnica around 2,7. 

(Cubital index is a relation between two bee wing vein lengths, microscope work.)


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## ShrekVa (Jan 13, 2011)

HaplozygousNut said:


> tend to supersede their queens during our early nectar flow in February, so it is disappointing to loose the queens before I breed from them. [/url]


That can be a good thing, hives that supercede over swarming can be used to reduce the swarming tendency overall in your bees.


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Here is a picture of Caucasian bees from their native land in northeastern Turkey (their hair bands don't look extremely thick really):
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Caucasian-honeybee-in-hive-E-SEZGIN-2010_fig1_290338723



ShrekVa said:


> That can be a good thing, hives that supercede over swarming can be used to reduce the swarming tendency overall in your bees.


That is interesting ShrekVa. I had not thought of it that way!


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Here are some pictures of Caucasian bees from Turkey. At least some of them have very thick bands:
https://turkishtravelblog.com/beekeeping-beekeeper-honey/

Also, about the Cyprian bees. They are said to be light colored all the way down to the 4th abdominal segment (translate this Arabic to English by using Google Translate):
https://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/نحل_قبرصي

Genetic purity of the Caucasian bees in Turkey (genetic range map on second page):
Search on Google *"Turkish Honeybees: Genetic Variation and Evidence for a Fourth Lineage of Apis mellifera mtDNA M. R. Palmer, D. R. Smith, and O. Kaftanoglu"*


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

GregV said:


> Speaking of the Caucasions - like I said - the differences in the latitudes are so severe just over the short distances that you can see palm trees and snow standing in the single spot. Subtropics and alpine meadows within the same visible range.
> Naturally, the eco conditions very a lot. And bees.


Here is a weather map video of the Caucasus mountain region this winter 2021. I can see how the mountains/higher elevation are colder than the lower elevation areas.





Georgia Weather Map


Animated Georgia weather map showing 12 day forecast and current weather conditions. Overlay rain, snow, cloud, wind and temperature, city locations and webcams




www.weather-forecast.com


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

If you are still interested in this subject, you should be learning about morphological analysis.


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

GregV said:


> If you are still interested in this subject, you should be learning about morphological analysis.


Okay GregV. Is that the cubital index and discoidal shift on the wing veins of the different subspecies? I read about entomologists using the wing veins to distinguish between honeybee subspecies. But, I was thinking using a combination of several different traits would be the best thing, not only wing veining traits!


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

HaplozygousNut said:


> Okay GregV. Is that the cubital index and discoidal shift on the wing veins of the different subspecies? I read about entomologists using the wing veins to distinguish between honeybee subspecies. But, I was thinking using a combination of several different traits would be the best thing, not only wing veining traits!


Certainly.
It is a complex.
Fortunately, most all wing morphology tools are written to include the Caucasians into the analysis.
Why not take advantage of a tool freely available and definitely useful.
Here is talk:









GregV's Alternative way to keep (have?) bees.


Count me as one impressed. To be sure, Russ, I only did some auto mechanic-level hacking (not the car design). I will not pretend to understand the complete logic behind the algorithms. No need - smart people have done the smart work already for us. Will keep reporting.




www.beesource.com


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

GregV said:


> Certainly.
> It is a complex.
> Fortunately, most all wing morphology tools are written to include the Caucasians into the analysis.
> Why not take advantage of a tool freely available and definitely useful.
> ...


Wow! Thank you for showing me the progress in wing vein identification! I am eager to see your progress with your honeybees in Wisconsin! But do you think that just wing veining will be enough to identify when an unknown subspecies is within the bee wing veins tested? It may throw things off. California and the Southeast US may have a large variety of subspecies of honeybees that are not well known yet to be here in the US. There could have been imports of bees from Northern Africa, Middle East, etc, back a long time ago before importation of honeybees were banned.

Sincerely, Nathaniel Long IV


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

HaplozygousNut said:


> Wow! Thank you for showing me the progress in wing vein identification! I am eager to see your progress with your honeybees in Wisconsin! But do you think that just wing veining will be enough to identify when an unknown subspecies is within the bee wing veins tested? It may throw things off. California and the Southeast US may have a large variety of subspecies of honeybees that are not well known yet to be here in the US. There could have been imports of bees from Northern Africa, Middle East, etc, back a long time ago before importation of honeybees were banned.
> 
> Sincerely, Nathaniel Long IV


So again, this is a complex problem.
For example, I re-did my #1 test sample after improving the images/land-marking.
Here it is.
So with a good certainty you can tell - these mutts have no Caucasions mixed in to worry about.
This seems to be a Carni queen mated with a bunch of Italian drones - a pretty safe bet based on this and other information that I know.

Now - you can easily eliminate this colony from your Caucasian program (regardless of how much propolis they may be hoarding). At this level this is more about elimination - already a big deal.

Let us not worry about some minute-levels of subspecies that maybe mixed in on this level.
You are jumping ahead of the horse here.

If you identify some colonies that you *can not *easily exclude using the rough tools AND you care for more refinement - do the 19-point morpology analysis using IdentiFly (much more laborious project).
Even more refinement?
Well, then do genetics testing AFTER you exhausted the rough exclusion first (done cheaply and easily).


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

GregV said:


> So again, this is a complex problem.
> For example, I re-did my #1 test sample after improving the images/land-marking.
> Here it is.
> So with a good certainty you can tell - these mutts have no Caucasions mixed in to worry about.
> ...


Cool.

I was actually thinking that we could have a rather large percentage of a subspecies that is not yet commonly known to be here in the US, rather than just a minute amount! Especially in the feral populations here in the milder winter south.

I am even wondering whether the feral populations here, in North Carolina where I am, are retaining their purity of strain/strains despite open mating in areas with beekeepers buying foreign queens from queen breeders all across the US. I have been steadily getting more varroa mite resistance these past few years, beginning from when I started raising bees. Each year there have been less stress signs from Varroa of our bee colonies here in central NC.

*My first year*, I had two colonies. One had lighter bees and had more varroa stress. The other was a darker colony and showed less stress from varroa. The beekeeper I got the colonies from treated with black walnut smoke to kill the varroa mites. They seemed to show as much stress with trachael mites as with varroa, interestingly. They had a lot of bees dying at the front of the hives with folded "K" wings, which is a symptom of trachael mites I have read. They did have a lot of hairless bees and deformed wing virus at the entrance of the hives. These stresses happen during the summer dearth here. These two colonies were fine going through the winter though, and actually improved in health during the winter, building up nicely and swarming in Spring.

*My second season, *it was similar with the many small colonies by the time it was into the summer dearth again. Varroa and trachael mite stress consistent with all the colonies.

*My third season*, this generation of bees all consistently were better with the varroa and trachael mite stress.

Now, our bees do not show signs of varroa or trachael mite stress, even far into the summer dearth. I did find a deformed winged worker each in two colonies this Spring, when I went through brood combs, so they were not completely resistant, but enough that you wouldn't notice the stress. Here are videos of the two colonies that had the deformed wing virus. As you can see, they look healthy enough: (



) (



)

And this resistance to Varroa/trachael mites is consistent with all of our colonies. This is very strange because, just a few years ago, our colonies were showing so much stress from the mite viruses! This is strange also because you would think there would be variation in resistance from colony to colony from the expected mixing with bees from commercial beekeepers, because our bees are freely/open mated (no artificial insemination). This is a reason that I think our bees here in our colonies may be retaining their purity to the feral population, keeping most of their excellent resistance to Varroa and Trachael mites. I may be taping into a feral population by just leaving our bees to open mate each season.

There... I have rambled on enough. Thank you for reading what I had to say.

* Questions about the wing veining:
#1* Would the wing veining technique of identification have problems when certain subspecies are mixed, causing an overlap in wing veining traits to look alike to other subspecies that they are not?

*#2 *Would wing veining vary considerably between some strains within a subspecies? Or would you be able to see the similarities between the wing veins of different strains because they are closely related to each other? For example, the German black bees (Am mellifera) have a large range across different climate zones in Europe. This makes me think that they would have variation in traits, such as in wing veining, between the strains of German Black bees. And I believe I remember reading about A. m. intermissa from North Africa having a lot of variation between regions or different populations (not sure about this though). Also, Carpathian bees (A. m. carpatica) from the Carpathian mountains, and Carniolan bees (A. m. carnica) from the Alps were once considered to be separate subspecies, though closely related. Now with genetic testing the Carpathian bee has been placed into the Carniolan subspecies, though there are still differences between these two strains.


Anyway, this sounds like a great idea so that you can selectively breed till you eliminate a lot of other subspecies in the mix, before using genetic testing to refine the purity of a subspecies (such as if select breeding for the Caucasian bee), or maybe even just to verify that your selecting with wing veining is working, that is if it works very well with wing veining alone.

-Nathaniel Long IV


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## JWPalmer (May 1, 2017)

Nathaniel, I do not know enough about this particular subject to discuss it in depth, but some of your observations are consistant with my own, and the pictures you show could have been of my bees. This is one of the reasons I am so interested in the Identifly program, the potential for some answers


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

Nathaniel,
By far, the predominant subspecies you will see - Carnica, Ligustica, Caucasica.
FYI - Carpathica is non-distiguishable from Carnica by the morpho - so considered the same.
Then, if lucky, Mellifera and Sossimai.
Then, if lucky (or unlucky) - Scutellata (I don't even have the wing specifications for the Scutellata for the morpho-analysis).

Outiside of these, you'd be very lucky to detect much else using the general morpho-analysis.
So why even worry?
I'd let the academics worry about it; I got other fish to fry - just the subs listed above gives plenty to work with (think of all possible combinations).

I will read and digest your entire post later - gotta go and play in the snow!


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

HaplozygousNut said:


> purity to the feral population,



What is exactly "purity to the feral population"?
You don't even know what IS contained in your feral population - how can you talk of any "purity"?

Be great if you find some of these "ferals" and analyze them.
I'd love to see their make-up.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

HaplozygousNut said:


> *#1* Would the wing veining technique of identification have problems when certain subspecies are mixed, causing an overlap in wing veining traits to look alike to other subspecies that they are not?


Of course.
Again - look at the picture I posted.
Do you see the overlaps?
Do you see how the Carnica and Ligustica overlap?
See how Caucasica relates to them?
If YES - then good.
If NO - then look again.
This is expected.

Mellifera, on the other hand, does not overlap much with anything (some with Caucasica).
To be noted.

All we are talking about - the probabilities and certain confidence intervals.
There will be cases where you'd have no idea what you see - the readings will be all over the place due to whatever.
Sometimes you WILL have pretty darn good idea - the readings will be concentrated in some area.
Sometimes all you care is to see if some race is just probably present (say, you see 5-10% of Mellifera) - that maybe enough to keep the bees in your program.

So - until you run the analysis - you can theorize all you want, it will not matter.
Do the analysis and see IF any of it makes sense or not.
It is good to run bench-mark analysis on something you know what it is - then see if the analysis confirms just that (it should too).


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

HaplozygousNut said:


> *#2 *Would wing veining vary considerably between some strains within a subspecies? Or would you be able to see the similarities between the wing veins of different strains because they are closely related to each other?


Well, the experts (talking Ruttner and others) consider the wing morphology to be a good indicator of the subspecies.
I will not claim I know much more (rather I know much less).
I don't know a good answer to your questions.

But basically, you are just rephrasing the question #1 above - I think.
And if so, my #1 answer is the best I can do now.

With much hybridization in the US, it would be nearly impossible to find anything "pure" around.
In our cross-breeding environment, learning how to read the hybrid morpho-logical maps is a challenge is actually totally NEW approach. I will say, becoming expert in the general morpho-analysis is rather a requirement if you are into bee breeding/bee selling. Otherwise, you don't even have general idea of your own bee make-up (not to mention telling others of what it is you are selling to them).


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

JWPalmer said:


> Nathaniel, I do not know enough about this particular subject to discuss it in depth, but some of your observations are consistant with my own, and the pictures you show could have been of my bees. This is one of the reasons I am so interested in the Identifly program, the potential for some answers


Nice! That is interesting. You are in Virginia, which is north of North Carolina where I am. Thank you for telling me this JWPalmer. I think I was misidentifying Tunisian bees (A. m. intermissa) for Caucasian bees (A. m. caucasia) here on this topic about distinguishing between Caucasian and Carniolan bees. Also, I think I may have been often misidentifying German Black bees (A. m. mellifera) as Carniolan bees (A. m. carnica) in our colonies.

Although German black bees have a wide abdomen which looks different from the more narrow, "torpedo" shaped abdomen of the Carniolan bee:
IV. Расы (породы) и типы пчел Центральной Европы (photos comparing German black bees vs. Carniolan bees in this Russian article)


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

GregV said:


> Nathaniel,
> By far, the predominant subspecies you will see - Carnica, Ligustica, Caucasica.
> FYI - Carpathica is non-distiguishable from Carnica by the morpho - so considered the same.
> Then, if lucky, Mellifera and Sossimai.
> ...


Okay, thank you GregV!

If I remember correctly, the A. m. scutellata here in the New World came from queens imported from Pretoria, South Africa, and one queen from Tanzania. Pretoria, South Africa gets a very mild winter:

*Climate of Pretoria, South Africa* (from Google search)

_Month/Daily High/Daily Low

May/ 73F/46F
June/ 68F/40F
July/ 68F/40F
August/ 72F/45F_

So there is the possibility of Africanized bees ranging into milder winter areas, I think. Unless there already has been a lot of genetic testing for African genetics here in the US, so that the African bee range is already known for sure here in the US... I don't know if there has been much testing all across the US for African bee genetics yet. I am particularly curious on how far north the A lineage would go if there were testing for the A lineage here in the US. A. m. intermissa from Northwest Africa of the A lineage may be cold hardy enough to range surprisingly far north, especially if there is a mountain strain of A. m. intermissa here.

Here is an interesting article about SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphism). Unique mutations or unique combination of mutations in the genes of different kinds of bees, if I am understanding it right. It is used like finger printing to identify bee subspecies or strains: A Molecular Method for the Identification of Honey Bee Subspecies Used by Beekeepers in Russia

The article mentions something about A. m. scutellata found in Europe?:

_*"It should be noted that the disadvantage of mitochondrial DNA studies is the difficulty in tracing paternal honey bee introgression, particularly with African species, such as A. m. scutellata. To track the paternal introgression, it is necessary to study nuclear DNA. The historical processes of the paternal nuclear introgression for A. m. scutellata in Europe and North America have been shown via nuclear DNA analyses for different bee subspecies [38,39], while mitochondrial DNA did not allow for to detect these processes. However, the introgression of African bees is not a problem in Russia due to the cold climatic conditions, and no evidence of such a process has been found." *_


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

GregV said:


> What is exactly "purity to the feral population"?
> You don't even know what IS contained in your feral population - how can you talk of any "purity"?
> 
> Be great if you find some of these "ferals" and analyze them.
> I'd love to see their make-up.


Yes, that is true. By purity I meant that the feral bees would be able to selectively breed for their own genetics by some instinct/s, keeping their gene pool rather pure despite foreign commercial bees in the area. But, also I have thought about the possibility of certain subspecies like Saharan bees or Tunisian bees selecting for their own subspecies or strain. These are just wild guesses, and I do not have very good evidence for this as of yet. I would like to watch colonies that seem to have high percentage of Tunisian bees and see whether they mate unusually pure each season when replacing their queens.

Here are a couple of our bee colonies that are similar to Tunisian bees in looks:










I may try to analyze them. Any help or advice on wing veining is appreciated GregV.  Right now I have lost very many hives due to swarming last year (they swarmed too much till they were without honey stores for our summer dearth), so it may be a while before I can have enough colonies to search for wings. Sorry!


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

GregV said:


> Of course.
> Again - look at the picture I posted.
> Do you see the overlaps?
> Do you see how the Carnica and Ligustica overlap?
> ...


Sorry, but I have not studied the wing veining technique of identifying honeybee subspecies! I have looked and compared wings of A. m. mellifera to other subspecies of honeybees a little bit online, but I don't know enough to notice the Carnica and Ligustica overlap in the picture of the wing veining you posted.

-Nathaniel Long IV


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

HaplozygousNut said:


> I don't know enough to notice the Carnica and Ligustica overlap in the picture of the wing veining you posted.


The probability graphs constructed around the *main three indexes (CI, DsA, HI)* used for subspecies identifications (see the poligons in different colors above) clearly show how Ligustica and Carnica overlap. In fact, Ligustica probability area is largely contained by Carnica probability area.
Sounds like you need some reading to do.


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

HaplozygousNut said:


> Here is an interesting article about SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphism). Unique mutations or unique combination of mutations in the genes of different kinds of bees, if I am understanding it right. It is used like finger printing to identify bee subspecies or strains: A Molecular Method for the Identification of Honey Bee Subspecies Used by Beekeepers in Russia
> 
> The article mentions something about A. m. scutellata found in Europe?:
> 
> _*"It should be noted that the disadvantage of mitochondrial DNA studies is the difficulty in tracing paternal honey bee introgression, particularly with African species, such as A. m. scutellata. To track the paternal introgression, it is necessary to study nuclear DNA. The historical processes of the paternal nuclear introgression for A. m. scutellata in Europe and North America have been shown via nuclear DNA analyses for different bee subspecies [38,39], while mitochondrial DNA did not allow for to detect these processes. However, the introgression of African bees is not a problem in Russia due to the cold climatic conditions, and no evidence of such a process has been found." *_


Now that I think about it, the A. m. scutellata genes in Europe could be from A. m. monticola from Africa. A. m. monticola is said to be genetically the same subspecies as A. m. scutellata (https://www.researchgate.net/figure...pper-row-Dorsal-view-of-entire_fig1_258504317).

A. m. monticola is a mountain form of A. m. scutellata that is gentle. They are probably better for cooler climates than the more tropical lowland strains of A. m. scutellata. A. m. monticola has dark thorax haired drones, like Caucasian bee drones are said to have, too. Here, in this article there is a picture of a A. m. monticola drone:








Monticola Picture Log


The Buckfast Africa Team. Brother Adam stayed home this time, 1989, when Kenya was visited. The others from left: Bert Thrybom, Erik Bjorklund and Erik Osterlund from Sweden and Michael van der Zee from Holland. It was Africa we visited and of course we took a tour to the big animals...




www.beesource.com





Here is an article about small cell size varroa resistance in Norway (Survival of a Commercial small cell and treatment free Beekeeper in Norway - ResistantBees_english). It talks about the A. m. monticola mixed breed they were using in Sweden and Norway. They say it was good with varroa resistance.







Here is an article about wing morphometrics used to identify between A. m. intermissa, A. m. sahariensis, and A. m. capensis: https://www.researchgate.net/figure...m-sahariensis-and-A-m-capensis_fig1_309493644

They said that the morphometrics was a very good way to distinguish between the bee subspecies:

Quote from "Discussion" section at the bottom of the article:

*"The results indicated that geometric morphometrics using landmarks efficiently distinguished A. m. intermissa, A. m. sahariensis and A. m. capensis. This result is supported by several other publications on A. mellifera (Baylac et al. 2008, Tofilski 2008, Barour et al. 2011, Francoy et al. 2011, Miguel et al. 2011). Kandemir et al. (2011) also reported that a landmark analysis of wing shape could be used as a reliable tool to discriminate among honeybee subspecies. Furthermore, Oleksa and Tofilski (2015) reported that in some studies, morphometrics proved to be even more effective in the identification of subspecies than molecular markers, and that the morphological characters were also more suitable for distinguishing ecotypes within A. mellifera subspecies."*


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

GregV said:


> The probability graphs constructed around the *main three indexes (CI, DsA, HI)* used for subspecies identifications (see the poligons in different colors above) clearly show how Ligustica and Carnica overlap. In fact, Ligustica probability area is largely contained by Carnica probability area.
> Sounds like you need some reading to do.


Yes. I have read about the wing veining of Carnica and Ligustica to be very similar. They are also closely related to each other, I have read.

GregV, are you able to tell whether the A. m. mellifera, A. m. carnica (?), A. m. ligustica in this drawing are correct in the wing veining? https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-de556333453b52101a4809ccc3b6af88


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

HaplozygousNut said:


> Yes. I have read about the wing veining of Carnica and Ligustica to be very similar. They are also closely related to each other, I have read.
> 
> GregV, are you able to tell whether the A. m. mellifera, A. m. carnica (?), A. m. ligustica in this drawing are correct in the wing veining? https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-de556333453b52101a4809ccc3b6af88


No.
Such drawing are useless.
We are talking some hundredths of a millimeter - these do make difference.
Hence good imaging/land marking makes all the difference to make it worthwhile.


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

GregV said:


> No.
> Such drawing are useless.
> We are talking some hundredths of a millimeter - these do make difference.
> Hence good imaging/land marking makes all the difference to make it worthwhile.


Okay, thank you GregV.


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## username00101 (Apr 17, 2019)

The caucasian bees do seem to show some evidence of reduced issues with varroa.

Queens are difficult to come by in my region, and I do not see anyone advertising the Caucasian queens.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

Pretty soon I will post my latest wing morpho-analysis against my own bees.

I will say - pretty much everything we have in the US is hybridized to such a degree that talking of the Caucasians (or any pure bees) is pretty much sense-less.

Folks - ALL we have is hybrids and this is where it stands.
Talking like "I have Caucasians" just makes no sense.

What does make sense to say - "I have bees that seem to have 30-40% presence of the Caucasian inheritance".
Even that is not given because lots of bee subspecies overlap per the wing analysis.


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## username00101 (Apr 17, 2019)

They're all the same species, Greg, why would the wing shape change?


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

username00101 said:


> They're all the same species, Greg, why would the wing shape change?


No one ever said - wing shape.
Technically, NOT the shape but rather imprint of the wing veins called *venation*.

The wings within the same honey bee historic sub-species are have unique venation.
The venation is a reliable marker that allows to differentiate between the honey bee races (sub-species).
This is most obvious when you are looking at pure bee races - e.g. pure AMM vs. pure AML - these are distinctly and reliably different per the wing morphology analysis.

This is not me saying this, I am simply looking at what has been done by the research.
There is solid and pretty old science that supports this - see Ruttner, Alpatov, etc.

When speaking of the hybrids (typical in the US), the morphology becomes tricky and this is where the different hybrid profiles may come to play (this is me thinking now).

Go to my GregV thread and read about the wing morphology..
I already wrote enough.


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

username00101 said:


> They're all the same species, Greg, why would the wing shape change?


Here is an article that shows a good picture of wing veining. The German black bee would have the negative on the "discoidal shift", [Caucasian bee, a zero], [Italian bee and Carniolan bee, positive] which you can see in the photo in the article.








Chapter: A Comprehensive Characterization of the Honeybees in Siberia (Russia)


A comprehensive study of some populations of honeybee (332 colonies) in Siberia (Tomsk region, Krasnoyarsk Krai (Yenisei population), Altai) using morphometric and molecular genetic methods was conduc




www.intechopen.com





I hope this is helpful!


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

HaplozygousNut said:


> The German black bee would have the negative on the "discoidal shift", [Caucasian bee, a zero], [Italian bee and Carniolan bee, positive] which you can see in the photo in the article.


In fact, the morpho-analysis tools that I use depend on three such indexes - Discoidal shift, Cubital index, Hentel index.
The absolute minimum is these *three indexes combined* to give you some kind of a bee inheritance picture.
A single index is NOT enough due to almost certain degree of hybridization and tool operator errors and more.
Ideally, even more indexes are to be measured - see IndentiFly tool for that.


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

HaplozygousNut said:


> A couple pictures of the aggressive golden colored bees that I have (once I saw about 6 or so bees at this entrance all golden with black tips on abdomen which was stunning:
> View attachment 52791
> View attachment 52793
> 
> They are always on the alert with wings outwards instead of folded when at rest, like from what I read about African bees do, too. The more percentage of golden bees that the colony has the more aggressive the colony is, so I think it might be Cyprian bees. Also, I thought I saw a picture of pure Cyprian bees a few years ago (can't remember where on the internet...) and they, from the best of my memory were stunningly golden with black tipped abdomens.


Actually, these might be Syrian bees. Syrian bees are aggressive and golden colored.
Quote from this article by Brother Adam: Brother ADAM – In Search of the Best Strains of Bee – Second Journey (1)
_*The Syrian bee, Apis mellifera var. syriaca, closely resembles the Cyprian; the two races are however quite distinct, although closely related. The Syrian bee is smaller, and it shows every defect of the Cyprian in an intensified form — particularly temper. In my estimation the temper of the Syrian deprives this race of any practical value it might otherwise possess, although — unlike some European races — it will not attack unless interfered with. Primitive beekeeping is therefore well able to get along with this bee, for beyond the annual taking of the honey at the end of the season (when colony strength is at its minimum) no interference is called for. But the manipulations demanded by modern beekeeping do not seem feasible with Syrian colonies. Even miniature colonies covering only a few combs will not tolerate disturbance, as I found by experience. Moreover a swarm of angry bees will pursue and attack any living creature within reach. This habit of attacking en masse at great distances from the hive is a very dangerous trait. Tellians, Cyprians and some French strains also show it, but to a much smaller degree.
The pure Syrian is an elegant bee. The abdomen is very pointed, and the first three dorsal segments are a clear lemon-yellow. Tomenta and over-hair have a silvery sheen, and the scutellum is bright yellow.





*_


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

So on the topic - Carni vs. Caucasian.
In my pile of mongrels I now have datasets heavy on the either the Carni or the Caucasian and they are markedly different.
Because Carni and Caucasian are on different ends of the wing morphology, this wing measurement is pretty good identification tool.


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

HaplozygousNut said:


> Here are some pictures of Caucasian bees from Turkey. At least some of them have very thick bands:
> Beekeeping in Turkey : How The Turks Make Sweet, Golden Honey
> 
> Also, about the Cyprian bees. They are said to be light colored all the way down to the 4th abdominal segment (translate this Arabic to English by using Google Translate):
> ...


Years ago I had a nucleus hive that had a small percentage of workers with thick bands and lead gray hair. I didn't exactly know what "lead gray color" was until recently. I used to think it was just pale white hairs when people said that Caucasian bees were "lead grey". But I looked at lead and saw the color was darker and different. The lead gray hair had a somewhat translucentness in the sunlight at an angle, if I remember correctly. The nuc starved at the start of the summer dearth, and I didn't get any photos or videos of it. Since then I haven't seen that lead grey colour again. I hope some time I will run across another hive like that and look at it more closely and get videos and photos.

Lead grey color of Caucasian bees:








Beekeeping In Turkey : How The Turks Make Sweet, Golden Honey


My hands on experience of beekeeping in Turkey. This local beekeeper was more than happy to show me his methods on how to produce the best honey in Turkey.



turkishtravelblog.com





Not all strains of Caucasians may have the "lead grey" hair, but rather whiter hair, like these:


http://entnemdept.ufl.edu/media/entnemdeptifasufledu/honeybee/pdfs/14,-February-2015,-Stocks-of-Bees-in-the-US,-low-res.pdf


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

JWPalmer said:


> Nathaniel, I do not know enough about this particular subject to discuss it in depth, but some of your observations are consistant with my own, and the pictures you show could have been of my bees. This is one of the reasons I am so interested in the Identifly program, the potential for some answers


Hello JWPalmer! Do you happen to have any photos of your bees that look similar to some of our Tunisian like bees? Or are they German black bee like bees that you have?


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## HTB (Aug 12, 2020)

Sadly JW passed away a few months ago.


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

I am sorry to hear that.


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