# Pictorial Honeybee Identification Guide?



## lcl

I am a new beekeeper that is looking for a pictorial honeybee guide. I was unable to find any side-by-side pictures of the various honeybee races. Please let me know of a good resource (printed or online) that could help me identify the most common honeybee races.

Thank you,

LCL


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## TattooedBeek

Buckfast









Russian









Italian









Carniolan


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## TattooedBeek

German


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## Kingfisher Apiaries

There is no way to tell the difference! There is way to much emphasis today about breeds of bees....its all $$$ hype!
Mike


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## SwedeBee1970

The 3rd picture looks like Cordovan 2 me. Their queens are orange-yellow.


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## mythomane

Kingfisher Apiaries said:


> There is no way to tell the difference! There is way to much emphasis today about breeds of bees....its all $$$ hype!
> Mike


There are many different bee breeds. Even a beginner can tell the difference between a Russian and Carniolan easily.


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## Joseph Clemens

Honeybee color, does not necessarily, indicate much about its heritage, other than what color its most recent parents contributed. Most, if not all honeybees in the USA today, are wide mixtures of genetics from many different subspecies of honeybee, even some that are hardly even thought much about, such as _Apis mellifera_ ssp. _lamarckii_. Curiously enough, genes from that Egyptian subspecies exist in many of our modern bees, yet I've never heard anybody call their bees, Egyptian instead of Italian, Caucasian, or Carniolan. Today, in the USA, most descriptors of honeybee type, such as if I were calling my bees, "Cordovan Italian", would simply mean that my bees (or at least my queens) are the lighter golden tan color that the Cordovan genes impart to lighter colored bees, such as share the coloration brought to the mix from _Apis mellifera_ ssp. _ligustica_. Calling them, "Cordovan Italian" might also imply that they also exhibit some of the other behavioral characteristics traditionally associated with the Italian subspecies. And though the Cordovan trait, which is only a recessive color trait (like blond hair in humans), can be bred into any variety of honeybee capable of breeding with _Apis mellifera_, I've rarely seen it offered in any other than bees carrying the lighter Italian colored exoskeleton.


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## wadehump

I like the mutt line the best,they will survive the winter and they will make surplus honey


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## Phoebee

Mythomane, here's hoping that's correct. As a newbie, a colony just looked like a mass of bees to me, but once a few features of workers, queens, and drones were pointed out I could spot them easily. Ferinstance, drones, having only one thing on their minds, are blockheads, an easily spotted feature. So ... what distinguishing features are you looking for when identifying bees, 'cause at this point, looking at the above, I'm siding with Kingfisher!

My contribution below I believe is a native bee from West Virginia. She's a looker, vaguely similar to honeybees but readily seen as different from those above. I've got other pics from a couple of hives run by PWRBA, some with very much darker abdomens than others.


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## Gilligan

I think that was just different pictures of the same bee.


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## Phoebee

I tried to delete the first picture ... thought I succeeded but the Attached Thumbnails version is hiding in there somewhere like some %$#@ hive beetle.


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## mythomane

As a new beek I know things can be confusing. A large part of getting the right answers rely on asking the right questions. The info given by Joseph Clements is dead on when he says that most bees in the US are a mix of genetics and that color does not denote much, although it can be a good indicator of what kind of bee it is or what its traits are. There are places where bees are more genetically true to a breed (Like Primorsky Krai for instance), and you wont find Carniolans doing well in the desert. There are in fact tens of thousands of different kinds of bees. Most of them do not produce honey, however. These roads of inquiry will lead you to the investigation of many interesting aspects of entomology. If the study of insects is your thing then have at it. Lets change the thrust here a little bit and ask: What kind of Bee do I Want? Do I want bees resistant to mites? Where am I located and what bees would do well there? Do I want a hive that produces a lot of honey, but then eats as much in the winter? As far as their condition or history: Do you want bees that have been medicated with everything under the sun and trucked around the country and exposed to 100s of pesticides? The identification of bees for the practical beekeeper is less about entomology then about what traits define them. This is not "hype"...


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## Phoebee

Mythomane--

Yeah, but exactly what features are you looking at? OK, color is not reliable. What are you using? Do Russian bees do a Kamarinskaya dance when they return from foraging? Do German bees wear lederhosen? It is quite clear to me, upon reading _The Queen Must Die_, that Italian bees practice Machiavellian politics, but I couldn't spot that in a photograph.

C'mon, what's your trick? 

I'm not saying this can't be done ... I can usually distinguish a Korean from a Vietnamese, or a Somali from a Kenyan or Ethiopian. But I had to learn the characteristics to look for. They're subtle ... the great lesson in getting along, of course, is that we're all human, and a lot more alike than different. Same with honeybees, and we're seeking your insights.

As for what kind of bees my wife and I want, the answer is happy, healthy, successful bees. But then again, ours will be pets ... we are strictly in this as a hobby. One reason we're convinced to do it is the isolation of our intended apiary ... way up the holler, away from pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, or dense populations of bees that commute to the California almond groves. Plenty of poplar, black locust, and wildflowers.


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## mythomane

There is no "trick"

http://www.bushfarms.com/beesraces.htm


http://www.glenn-apiaries.com

I believe you are anthropomorphizing bees. I know of no general race of "happy" bees. Speaking broadly: Dont buy bees off the almonds. Try to get them from a treatment-free source. Buy a full hive not a nuc. You need to look at the traits you want and buy bees accordingly. Buy and read The Practical Beekeeper, or just go to the website. It will serve you better than "The Queen Must Die"


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## Phoebee

Believe it or not, I've seen that beeraces.htm link. It is a shame it has no comparative photographs. I see breeds listed in the Glen-apiaries.com link, but didn't notice an identification guide. That's the whole point of this topic ... the original poster, and a lot of other people, would like to be able to identify subspecies by examining photos. I'm seeing no concensus that this is possible, nor am I finding any identification guide that appears reliable, with photos or diagrams. I find these for native bees (although they're sketchy at best, only hitting a few of what I gather may be tens of thousands of species). The bee photo I posted may be a variety of native squash bee, but even that identification is highly tentative, and did not match perfectly with the guides I had available. 

Of course I'm anthropomorphizing. Our bees will be pets, and anybody with an ounce of honesty will admit they attribute human traits to their pets. 
All tongue in cheek, of course, attempting to draw you out how you looked at a bunch of bee photographs and declared that you thought you could identify a couple of subspecies. As a biologist, my suspicion is that nothing less than genotyping or gene sequencing can actually be relied upon, although the traits we desire, attributed to particular bee subspecies, can be measured in particular colonies.

Our bibliography doesn't yet have _The Practical Beekeeper_, but we're using _The Beekeeper's Handbook_, _The Beekeeper's Bible_, and _Backyard Beekeeper_ among other titles. _The Queen Must Die _is more for entertainment, but does a good job on bee politics.


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## enjambres

My hives are all swarm mutts.

And since this was my first year they all just looked like small, hostile-minded, bugs to me at first. (And why not, I'd arranged to have them turfed out of their chosen homes in my barns' walls.)

But as we got to know each other, I found the bees from the three different colonies were pretty easy to tell apart. My biggest hive's bees are much smaller compared to the bees I see in the apiary at my local bee-supply company. Another hive has much more yellow bees, of a normal size. 

And the third one (which is the only one to retain its swarm queen after the cut-out) mostly has bees that have long, sleek, black/dark, unstriped, pointy-ended abdomens. They all look queen-shaped to me, not worker-shaped. (A fact that caused me much consternation before I realized that it actually wasn't the queen I saw carrying water back to hive on a hot day - it was just one of her look-alike workers. Newbeek cluelessness in full display.). And this hive, in contrast to the others, has almost no varroa for some reason.

Mine are just pet bugs, too.

enj.

Thanks to all for pictures. I have been hoping for pictures like this.

Enj.


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## marshmasterpat

enjambres said:


> My hives are all swarm mutts.
> 
> And the third one mostly has bees that have long, sleek, black/dark, unstriped, pointy-ended abdomens. They all look queen-shaped to me, not worker-shaped. And this hive, in contrast to the others, has almost no varroa for some reason.
> Enj.


Have seen similar bees to that around here. They were not in my hives when I collected the originals, but have arrived in hives after new queens were produced by crossing with local drones. Hope mine show the similar no Varroa trend. 

Seems it would be tough to say you have "X" race of bees if there is any natural queen replacement going on in a hive. Because that queen could mate with a drone from each of the available commercial races and the hive be a mix of everything.


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## Paul McCarty

About the best way to tell what kind of bee they are appears to be looking at the queen, and even this is suspect in many cases. I will say that in my area most of the feral bees I see are pretty dark - black drones and dark queens seem to be the norm. Every so often you see lighter ones that look like the standard Italianish bee. We have a lot of strange genetics floating around here.

A few years back I pulled some bees out of an abandoned hive that were really odd looking. The queen was jet black with red speckling on her abdomen. Very, very aggressive bees - but also quite interesting to look at. Your guess is as good as mine as to what they originally were? The drones were quite odd looking too. It is a shame I could not keep them.


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## Edymnion

IMO, in the end it doesn't really matter unless you go to extreme lengths to ensure your queen is pure. Even if you buy purebreeds, they are going to requeen themselves sooner or later with whatever drones they can find in the area, which could be anything. Unless you are sitting on top of every hive constantly keeping an eye out for requeening and/or going through every inspection looking for your marked queen and re-ordering a new one whenever you see an unmarked one, you're going to end up with hybrid mutt bees eventually anyway.


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## Phoebee

Precisely, and that's_ probably _a good thing.

My bee supply house owner is doubtful that local bee populations adapt over any useful timeframe. He thinks evolution works too slowly.

Yes, say I, but Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium can work in a generation. If, instead of a pure strain (there really are none in nature), you have a mix of genes in the population, then "survival of the fittest" will happen fast, not by selecting mutations but by the best genes for the local circumstances becoming more prevalent in the overall mix. The usual example is a species of lizards in which both brown and green individuals may be present. In dry years, the greenies have trouble hiding, and are eaten, so their numbers drop. In green years, the greenies may have the edge and may outnumber the browns. Give this a hundred thousand years and you may have a new species, but H-W equilibrium can work fast. So the notion of "locally-adapted Southern Rocky Mountain bees" Paul cites is not out of the question. Being certain of subspecies is likely not possible without genetic testing. Being certain, by careful recordkeeping and comparisons, that a particular population of bees in a given region is more successful than, say, package bees from some remote area, is a matter of good scientific approaches.

I joined the Prince William Regional Beekeepers Association because they've participated in studies that proved an advantage to using local nucs in a published study. That's the sort of thing that interests the scientist in me.

We're not Germany, Italy, Russia, Egypt, the Caucasus, etc. here. The US is a melting pot, devoid of native honeybees, and what will work here needs to adapt. The more genes they have to draw on, the better. Yeah, mutts. God bless 'em.


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## Paul McCarty

Mutts are the way to go. For sure. That's what most of my bees are.


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## Biermann

Hello,

so what do I have, I circled one, it is much larger then the others, is it a drone? I also noticed that the abdomen changes in color, from the orange/yellow to just about black.









Larger








Cheers, Joerg


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## Arnie

Years ago I had an out apiary that I let re-queen themselves and one year one of the hives had bees that had purple color on them. Almost like a mauve shade. They were the prettiest bees ever.

I looked them up in an old bee book, that I have since lost track of, and the book named the race of bee but I forgot the name. Also, they described those bees as susceptible to disease and sure enough, they didn't over winter. Too bad, I wanted to raise some queens from them. 

Sweet natured too, just not hardy.


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## JudoJNoble

Hi there!

* Any chance someone can identify this race of bees?










I know it's not super likely, but thought I would ask. 

I had a swarm trap in this tree, and last Wednesday had the awesome experience of being right there when the entire colony (my first since I was about seven or eight years old) arrived. I moved them to their new home, about 100-150' away, within a few hours, and of course some (foragers?) kept returning to the tree. I gently swept stragglers into a bucket and carried them over to their new home, several times, over the course of that evening, until only a dozen or two remained. Now, almost five days later, about fifteen to twenty have weathered rain and a few cold nights to stay with the tree. I know the wind has blown their way from the hive, at least a few times, so they should have gotten wind of the pheromone. But still they remain.

* Any idea what's up with these girls?

Thanks in advance for any responses to either question. I've been reading quite a bit, but never had cause to post, as I have much more to learn than contribute. But now that I have my first colony in over twenty years, I guess it's time to start asking questions.


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## Chuck Jachens

I would think there is strong Italian in their background. Genetics is the only sure answer. I read somewhere the wing vein pattern can also help identify the domoninate race. Better question to ask is do they have the desirable characteristics you want in your apiary and are they survivor stock?

The bees are smelling the queen pheromone on the tree, leave it alone and the next swarm may use it.


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## JudoJNoble

"Better question to ask is do they have the desirable characteristics you want in your apiary and are they survivor stock?"

True. I'm not hung up on the race thing; it was more just a curiosity. 

I'll try and find the queen, and see if she's marked, after they've been in their new home a couple of weeks. But I assume they are feral, and therefore likely to be survivors (if that's what you mean). Especially given the direction from which they came (lots of woods and swamp), I don't expect they came from another beekeeper. Likelihood of survival is why I've decided to trap local swarms rather than import any.

"The bees are smelling the queen pheromone on the tree, leave it alone and the next swarm may use it."

Sounds good! I guess I'd better get a few more boxes. 

Thank you for your reply!


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## diymom

mythomane said:


> There is no "trick"
> 
> http://www.bushfarms.com/beesraces.htm
> 
> 
> http://www.glenn-apiaries.com
> 
> I believe you are anthropomorphizing bees. I know of no general race of "happy" bees. Speaking broadly: Dont buy bees off the almonds. Try to get them from a treatment-free source. Buy a full hive not a nuc. You need to look at the traits you want and buy bees accordingly. Buy and read The Practical Beekeeper, or just go to the website. It will serve you better than "The Queen Must Die"


This is a summary of what I've gathered on here over a month of reading and asking questions. One of my local clubs-the big one- advocates the opposite advice...California almond packaged bees and requesting and treating immediately. I am sooooooo glad I went with advice much like yours, there is more to beekeeping for beginners than packages and nucs if you can get them... I think feral bees are your best bet, even in California, for survival and adaptability. It's just a different style of beekeeping is required to deal with their swarming tendencies and or AHB traits if they have them. I hear the trade off is worth it though. Your regional bees are probably a lot less of a handful than ours.
Speaking from almost no experience, I am very happy to have avoided the pitfalls of a treated package and to have started out with a hive from a local feral swarm.


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