# German Black bees in the Southeastern US actually Apis mellifera iberiensis?



## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Does anyone have any thoughts on the actual bees introduced here in the Southeastern United States being Spanish Black bees instead of German Black bees? Spanish Black bees are similar to German Black bees, having narrow rings of hair on their abdomens' making the bees look glossy/shinny black rather than being fury/fuzzy grey like the Carniolans and Caucasian bees. The Spaniards were here in Florida before the British. The descriptions of the "German Black bees" from the Southeast US back in the older days sound very much like Spanish Black bees (brood disease problems, hive boiling out with nervous bees, aggressive, bad overwintering: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apis_mellifera_iberiensis). I am assuming that Spain has a dryer climate and so the Spanish black bees are not well adapted to going through wet winters, and so have brood diseases come up. In nature if an animal has sickness commonly, that is not good at all, and I believe it is not supposed to be that honey bees are weak and need us humans to keep them alive, but actually the problems of keeping bees are from bad beekeeping or a subspecies not well adapted to an area.


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## Juhani Lunden (Oct 3, 2013)

HaplozygousNut said:


> Does anyone have any thoughts on the actual bees introduced here in the Southeastern United States being Spanish Black bees instead of German Black bees?


There is no such bee race as German Black Bee.


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Juhani Lunden said:


> There is no such bee race as German Black Bee.


Apis mellifera subspecies mellifera. European Black bee (AKA German Black bee) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_dark_bee The first race of honey bee to be described, so it has kept its name in the subspecies rank. New subspecies of bees are given a different subspecies name, for example: Apis mellifera "yemenitica", and Apis mellifera "capensis" while the original bees described became Apis mellifera "mellifera" to distinguish between the other new subspecies discovered.


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## Jadeguppy (Jul 19, 2017)

You are talking about 500 years of evolution passing. Even with introduction, those not well adapted probably disappeared long ago except for maybe some recessive genes.


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## JWPalmer (May 1, 2017)

Ship's manifests were extremely detailed documents and absolutly nothing was loaded that did not go on the manifest. There are no surviving manifests indicating bee hives as cargo until the 1630's, on English ships coming to Jamestown. The early Spaniards would not have known that honey bees were not also present in the New World, thus they would not have brought them with until perhaps much later. Which sub-species of bees the settlers brought is open for debate. 

Virginia, home of the first imported honey bees in America!


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

https://www.researchgate.net/public...f_Middle_Eastern_Lineage_in_the_United_States


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## JWPalmer (May 1, 2017)

It would be interesting to see if a similar study has ever been done on the M lineages, especially here in the south east.


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## Fusion_power (Jan 14, 2005)

The feral black bees in the U.S. most likely were of Dutch origin. They would have been considered A. M. Mellifera.

There are ship records of Iberian bees brought to South America. Some of them wound up in Mexico and eventually in the southwestern U.S.

I have a note somewhere that the first record of bees on a ship manifest to the U.S. was in 1622. I have not tried to verify this though it is supposedly a readily available record.


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## Juhani Lunden (Oct 3, 2013)

Fusion_power said:


> The feral black bees in the U.S. most likely were of Dutch origin.
> 
> I have a note somewhere that the first record of bees on a ship manifest to the U.S. was in 1622. I have not tried to verify this though it is supposedly a readily available record.


In Ruttners book there is a picture from Am.Bee Journal 6/1991, page 369.

Same year, 1622, but he writes " imported by English settlers".


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## BattenkillJB (May 9, 2012)

I have spent time in Spain with the Iberian strain. They are unique and an ancient mix of the common European bee and an African mix brought by the Moors. They are large and aggressive. If they were introduced they would have disappeared by now.


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

BattenkillJB said:


> I have spent time in Spain with the Iberian strain. They are unique and an ancient mix of the common European bee and an African mix brought by the Moors. They are large and aggressive. If they were introduced they would have disappeared by now.


I thought that the Spanish black bees and German Black bees were of the same lineage as the Northwest African bees? The M lineage. The Saharan Desert separating the M lineage from the African "A" lineage. Is that not so? The Southeastern European bees such as the Italian and Carniolan bees being from the C lineage, closely related to the the Middle Eastern O lineage. I read that the M lineage came over a land bridge from Northwest Africa into the Iberian peninsula. See, this species of monkey lives in both Spain and Northwest Africa (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_macaque).


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

I found an article that shows taxonomy of the bees:
https://zookeys.pensoft.net/article/2803/element/7/0/apis mellifera cypria/


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

HaplozygousNut said:


> I thought that the Spanish black bees and German Black bees were of the same lineage as the Northwest African bees? .


You need to go to this post and read the attached PDF:
https://www.beesource.com/forums/sh...ment-Free-Bungling-2018&p=1762655#post1762655

Why guess; people already did some good work for you.


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## Eduardo Gomes (Nov 10, 2014)

A.m.iberiensis is a natural hybrid M and A lineage. A.m.mellifera (black bee) is M lineage. Photos of my a.m.iberisensis:


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>Does anyone have any thoughts on the actual bees introduced here in the Southeastern United States being Spanish Black bees

I suspect they are, but it is a question that could be answered by DNA testing. The wild bees in Florida have been tested and are.


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## Saltybee (Feb 9, 2012)

Eduardo Gomes said:


> Photos of my a.m.iberisensis:


That is a dark queen.


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## Fusion_power (Jan 14, 2005)

Mtdna showed feral bees in Florida to be a hodgepodge mix of various races including Mellifera, Ligustica, Carnica, and a small percent Lamarckii. To make a statement that they are high percentage Iberiensis would require a great deal of genetic verification that has not to my knowledge been done. It is reasonably certain that populations in the SouthWestern U.S. are derived from Iberiensis though not proven by genetics to my knowledge. The records of bees brought to Brazil were prior to importations to the Eastern U.S. by nearly 100 years so there was opportunity for them to spread around the Caribbean. If you search, there are a couple of provenance studies that delve into this topic to an extent.

Brother Adam had a bit to say on this topic that is worth reading. Also, the work of Ruttner showed relationships between Mellifera and Iberiensis.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>To make a statement that they are high percentage Iberiensis would require a great deal of genetic verification that has not to my knowledge been done.

There was an article in one of the bee journals (ABJ or Bee Culture, I don't remember which) a decade or more ago, that referenced a study to the effect that the wild bees in southern Florida had a high percentage of Iberiensis. And I remember another study to that same effect. I don't have time right now to track them down, but if someone wants to know you can certainly look for them.


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

GregV said:


> You need to go to this post and read the attached PDF:
> https://www.beesource.com/forums/sh...ment-Free-Bungling-2018&p=1762655#post1762655
> 
> Why guess; people already did some good work for you.


I checked this PDF file, but I couldn't find that it says that the A. m. iberiensis is of a mix of the "A" lineage and "M" lineage. 

It does say on pages 19 and 20: 

"Some honey bees in the Iberian peninsula found a route through the
eastern border of the Pyrenees and colonised much of northern
Europe above the aforementioned mountain ranges. At much the
same time, other honey bees colonies crossed the Straights of
Gibraltar from north Africa and interbred with bees that were already
there."

"Thus arose the subspecies Apis mellifera mellifera (the dark European
honey bee) and Apis mellifera iberica. Apis mellifera iberica is a
relatively modern natural hybrid that arose from the union of two
older subspecies after the last Ice Age. This is evident in the
mitochondrial DNA of the subspecies."

From what I have read the "M" lineage is from Northwestern Africa above the Saharan desert, also Western and Northern Europe. The articles I read could be outdated. The entomologists may not have done any genetics for the taxonomy of these lineages of bees and instead been going by the physical traits only.


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Eduardo Gomes said:


> A.m.iberiensis is a natural hybrid M and A lineage. A.m.mellifera (black bee) is M lineage. Photos of my a.m.iberisensis:
> View attachment 52117
> View attachment 52119
> View attachment 52121
> View attachment 52123


Thank you very much for the good photos Eduardo Gomes! The bands of your Spanish Black bees are not as narrow as I thought they needed to be. I have bees with similarity to yours, I think (they are a bit more aggressive than our average colonies). I can be wrong, though I have a good eye for insect identification from just looking at and comparing between different types of similar insects. A few of our bee colonies that I keep are duller brown and with dull thinner bands on abdomen. I will have to take pictures of them to prove how similar they are once we get a camera to let you guys see these bees that I think could have some Spanish black or German black blood in them. That would mean that the M lineage (or "M" mixed with "A" if indeed is true what you say about A. m. iberiensis) is not wiped out from the United States.


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Michael Bush said:


> >Does anyone have any thoughts on the actual bees introduced here in the Southeastern United States being Spanish Black bees
> 
> I suspect they are, but it is a question that could be answered by DNA testing. The wild bees in Florida have been tested and are.


Wow, thank you Michael Bush. I read in a new book at a book store that there was the "M" lineage in North Carolina, Arkansas and other southeastern states, but they did not specifically claim they were certain that they were the German black bee, just that the genetic studies showed that they found bees with percentage of the "M" lineage in them here in the Southeast US. I was wondering if the genetic studies done to prove that German black bees are in the Southeast US were actually just testing for the "M" lineage rather than specifically the German black bee, not knowing that there may be other subspecies of the same "M" lineage in the Southeastern US.


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## Riverderwent (May 23, 2013)

HaplozygousNut said:


> I was wondering if the genetic studies done to prove that German black bees are in the Southeast US were actually just testing for the "M" lineage rather than specifically the German black bee, not knowing that there may be other subspecies of the same "M" lineage in the Southeastern US.


Like Pineywoods Cattle.


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## Juhani Lunden (Oct 3, 2013)

HaplozygousNut said:


> I checked this PDF file, but I couldn't find that it says that the A. m. iberiensis is of a mix of the "A" lineage and "M" lineage.
> 
> It does say on pages 19 and 20:
> 
> ...


I looked at my book of Ruttner. Iberica is not a crossing, but a very old species, belonging to the group of dark bees in Europe and northern Africa. 

Intermissa is the oldest (Africa)
then formed Iberica (Spain and Portugal)
then formed Mellifera Mellifera

Bees in Iberian peninsula are more diverse than the black bees in the rest of (more northern) Europe, and he writes it is because the ice age spent such a long time over Europe, the black bees in Iberian peninsula had time to develop different subspecies. 

He continues and writes that in there are crossings between Iberica and Intermissa in the Iberian peninsula, but those two belong the same group of black bees (lineage M).


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## Eduardo Gomes (Nov 10, 2014)

HaplozygousNut said:


> Thank you very much for the good photos Eduardo Gomes!


you're welcomme HaplozygousNut. Today is how we think: our bee is the result of a cross between the A and M strains. We have a variety of scientific data that supports that ... until there is a credible rebuttal. I leave below the summary of a scientific publication that addressed this subject and its source.

"[…] A more complete picture of the complex diversity patterns of IHBs is revealed that includes 164 novel haplotypes, 113 belonging to lineage A and 51 to lineage M and within lineage A and 69 novel haplotypes that belong to sub-lineage AI, 13 to AII, and 31 to AIII. Within lineage M, two novel haplotypes show a striking architecture with features of lineages A and M, which based on sequence comparisons and relationships among haplotypes are seemingly ancestral. […]" source: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13592-017-0498-2


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## Juhani Lunden (Oct 3, 2013)

Eduardo Gomes said:


> you're welcomme HaplozygousNut. Today is how we think: our bee is the result of a cross between the A and M strains. We have a variety of scientific data that supports that ... until there is a credible rebuttal. I leave below the summary of a scientific publication that addressed this subject and its source.
> 
> "[…] A more complete picture of the complex diversity patterns of IHBs is revealed that includes 164 novel haplotypes, 113 belonging to lineage A and 51 to lineage M and within lineage A and 69 novel haplotypes that belong to sub-lineage AI, 13 to AII, and 31 to AIII. Within lineage M, two novel haplotypes show a striking architecture with features of lineages A and M, which based on sequence comparisons and relationships among haplotypes are seemingly ancestral. […]" source: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13592-017-0498-2


Ok.

M linage is the black bee
C linage is italian and carnica

A is a bit more complicated... AI, AII and AIII "The third group contains the reference A. m. intermissa and IHBs of the southwestern half of Iberia (AT2 to AT8, CT4 to CT9, MT4 to MT6). Within the third group, populations of CT4, CT5, and A. m. intermissa formed a well-supported group dominated by sub-lineage AII. Sub-lineage AIII occurred in high proportions in AT3 and AT4, while sub-lineage AI was the most frequent from AT7 to AT8, CT6 to CT9, and MT5 to MT6."

What confuses me is that they name some groups of this A group with capital C, like CT4, CT5 etc.


But seems to support what Ruttner says that Intermissa and Iberica have been crossing in the southern(western) part of the Iberian peninsula.

It sort of says that Iberica is not a race at all??? 

I thought, form Ruttner, that Iberica is the original race, which then in the south developed into a hybrid with Intermissa.

Seems to be that Ruttner and Brother Adam both put Intermissa and Iberica in the same group of black bee races, but in this grouping according to different linages (A, B and C), Iberica disappears as a race. There is only Intermissa and Mellifera, and Iberica is a hybrid between them.


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## Eduardo Gomes (Nov 10, 2014)

>>What confuses me is that they name some groups of this A group with capital C, like CT4, CT5 etc.

Hello Juhani. If I read well the article the use of capital C does not refer to lineage C (carnica, ...) but to the Sampling sites, in the case of CT to "Central transect".

"Our results reinforce the hypothesis of a hybrid origin for A. m. iberiensis originating from a process of secondary contact (Smith et al. 1991; Chávez-Galarza et al. 2015). The haplotypes form a well-defined M-A cline (Figure 1) and a complex network (Figure 3), which can be explained by multiple origins of haplotypes (Crandall and Templeton 1993) and by a more recent history of diversification of haplotypes belonging to African sub-lineages. The links with large genetic distances that separate the most frequent M haplotypes represent several mutational steps that might have accumulated during the climatic oscillations produced by glacial episodes. Contrary to what is seen in lineage M, lineage A exhibits shorter links for the most frequent haplotypes, suggesting that A haplotypes evolved in a more stable climate and were less affected by the Pleistocenic climatic changes." source: https://link.springer.com/article/10...592-017-0498-2

P.S. I recently read a paper that concludes that the Italian ligustica is also a hybrid.


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## Juhani Lunden (Oct 3, 2013)

Eduardo Gomes said:


> P.S. I recently read a paper that concludes that the Italian ligustica is also a hybrid.


Hello Eduardo,

I´d live to have that paper. 
It is so frustrating when lecturing beekeeping and people are stuck up with this race issue. Like this: "I have italian bees because they are yellow" or " I have italian bees, I cannot buy buckfast queens, because they make angry hives."
Race is actually just a definition of man. Bees live and mate happily without knowing anything about races...

We have for long known in Finland that our "italian" bee is a crossing between ligustica and the "original" (import from Estonia and Sweden) black bee. Although a crossing, there is some definite interest towards it: The beekeepers in Central Europe are interested in this "italian" bee which winters well and consumes its reserves more thoughtfully.


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## Eduardo Gomes (Nov 10, 2014)

Juhani Lunden said:


> I´d live to have that paper.


 It's this one Juhani: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10886654


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## Fusion_power (Jan 14, 2005)

One of the things we know about species dispersal is that maximum genetic diversity is found nearest the center or origin of a species. This entirely supports the origin of the western honeybee in Africa as the species found there have far more diversity than any of the European species. Instead of looking at Iberica as a hybrid, it is probably better to look at it as the first stage of expansion after the last ice age after which bees expanded further up into Western Europe. In other words, A.M.mellifera is probably derived from A.M. Iberica which is derived from A.M. Intermissa. There was a similar paradigm of bees expanding up the eastern side of the Mediterranean resulting in the Italian, Macedonian, and Carniolan groups. We might divide them up into 4 lineages today and we might talk about them spreading out of Africa after the ice age, but where did the bees in Africa come from?


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## bushpilot (May 14, 2017)

Juhani Lunden said:


> It is so frustrating when lecturing beekeeping and people are stuck up with this race issue. Like this: "I have italian bees because they are yellow" or " I have italian bees, I cannot buy buckfast queens, because they make angry hives."
> 
> Race is actually just a definition of man. Bees live and mate happily without knowing anything about races...


:applause:


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## Juhani Lunden (Oct 3, 2013)

Fusion_power said:


> In other words, A.M.mellifera is probably derived from A.M. Iberica which is derived from A.M. Intermissa.


I think this is exactly how Ruttner (and Adam) saw it.


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## Eduardo Gomes (Nov 10, 2014)

Fusion_power said:


> In other words, A.M.mellifera is probably derived from A.M. Iberica which is derived from A.M. Intermissa.


The most robust hypothesis now proposes another slightly more complex explanation: during the last glaciation the M lineage survived in some niches of Iberia and expanded again to the north (current France, Germany, ...) after the last glaciation, while the M populations remaining in the Iberian Peninsula hybridized with bees from northern Africa (A), giving rise to the present Am iberiensis, an A / M hybrid.

"DNA and microsatellites (Smith et al. 1991; Arias and Shepp- ard 1996; Franck et al. 1998; Garnery et al. 1991, 1998, 1998a,b; De la Ru ́ a et al. 1999, 2002b, 2004a,b, 2005a; Ca ́ novas et al. 2002; Arias et al. 2006) have supported the hypothesis that Iberian honeybees are the result of a wide intergradation between honeybees of the M branch that survived the last glaciation event, and North African honeybees of the A lineage that have colonized south-west Europe. In this hypothesis it is assumed that bees of the M lineage survived the last glaciation in different refugia of Iberia and started a northwards colonizing expansion in the last postglacial era, that in the same period there have been one or more colonization waves of honeybees coming from Africa (A lineage), and that hybrid- ization between both lineages has given rise to a clinal distribution of haplotypes A and M, that is more gradual to the east of Iberia and sharp to the northwest (De la Ru ́ a et al. 2005a,b)." source: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.727.9745&rep=rep1&type=pdf


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## Juhani Lunden (Oct 3, 2013)

Eduardo Gomes said:


> The most robust hypothesis now proposes another slightly more complex explanation: during the last glaciation the M lineage survived in some niches of Iberia and expanded again to the north (current France, Germany, ...) after the last glaciation, while the M populations remaining in the Iberian Peninsula hybridized with bees from northern Africa (A), giving rise to the present Am iberiensis, an A / M hybrid.
> 
> "DNA and microsatellites (Smith et al. 1991; Arias and Shepp- ard 1996; Franck et al. 1998; Garnery et al. 1991, 1998, 1998a,b; De la Ru ́ a et al. 1999, 2002b, 2004a,b, 2005a; Ca ́ novas et al. 2002; Arias et al. 2006) have supported the hypothesis that Iberian honeybees are the result of a wide intergradation between honeybees of the M branch that survived the last glaciation event, and North African honeybees of the A lineage that have colonized south-west Europe. In this hypothesis it is assumed that bees of the M lineage survived the last glaciation in different refugia of Iberia and started a northwards colonizing expansion in the last postglacial era, that in the same period there have been one or more colonization waves of honeybees coming from Africa (A lineage), and that hybrid- ization between both lineages has given rise to a clinal distribution of haplotypes A and M, that is more gradual to the east of Iberia and sharp to the northwest (De la Ru ́ a et al. 2005a,b)." source: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.727.9745&rep=rep1&type=pdf


Ok. :thumbsup:
Ruttner and Adam could not study dna or microsatellites. They looked and measured from outside. 

But about Italian race:
How can they know, that the Ligurian (with no M linage crossing) type of Italian bee is not the original, like Adam for instance assumed? The hybrid types in the rest of the country could have been forming later?


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

Fusion_power said:


> .......... but where did the bees in Africa come from?


Where did humans in Africa come from?

This is the same question.
The bees and the Home spread in a very similar fashion.
From the original Motherland - Africa.


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Actually I do not know anymore what these thinner ringed bees that I have are. They seem less hairy than Carniolans and more shiny, and I read here on this Romanian website that Carpathian bees are that way with thinner bands and darker thorax hairs: https://www.renastereastuparitului.com/diferenta-intre-carpatica-si-carnica/

Here is one of those thinner band bees we have (some have the 5th tergite band less than half the segment, so especially narrow, even when seemed to be mixed with lighter Italian.).






This colony also has some drones with dark thorax hairs which means that do not sound like Carpathian bees... And Caucasian bees have dark thorax hair drones also, but have very thick bands on abdomen, even more so than Italian and Carniolan from what Dave Cushman said.


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## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

Nathaniel:

I have enjoyed reading this thread. You may have already had the opportunity to read this series of articles written by Dr. Everett Oertel, USDA Research Entomologist published in circular in the American Bee Journal c. 1976, but if not they are well worth the read. It is the most comprehensive and well-researched summary on the topic I have found, at least without the benefit of background genetic testing.

A summary of this information was also included (attached) in a 1980 USDA publication.

Have a great weekend.

Russ


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Thank you for the articles Litsinger (Russ). I haven't seen those articles before.

Nathaniel Long

These bees around this beetle seem to have thin bands. Would they have some German Black or Spanish black bee in them? They are acting as if the beetle is their queen...
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/9f/10/de/9f10de00462f5ba6ab28352a8d99db88.jpg
I got the photo from here: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/317574211199407816


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## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

HaplozygousNut said:


> Thank you for the articles Litsinger (Russ). I haven't seen those articles before.


Glad to share. If there is one thing I would take away from the history of importation of bees into the Eastern US and the continued migratory practices of commercial beekeeping across the 'lower 48' it is that one might find a little bit of a lot of different bee 'races' in the background genetics of one's bee stock. So from my very humble perspective, it would not surprise me a bit if you were able to find traces of genetics of German and Spanish origin.


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

GregV said:


> Where did humans in Africa come from?
> 
> This is the same question.
> The bees and the Home spread in a very similar fashion.
> From the original Motherland - Africa.


but where did the bees in Africa come from? IMO ,,well during the beginning of the Ice age the bees either perished, or moved south. then post Ice age moved back, two times for the 2 major Ice ages. So I would think they moved north adapting were pushed south adapting both times in Africa co mingled. Non Ice age Africa is mostly desert, ICe age it was likely better habitat. Interesting discussion. But with all the movement and the movement caused by people, "Pure Breeds" likely are rare.
GG


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

Gray Goose said:


> but where did the bees in Africa come from? IMO ,,well during the beginning of the Ice age the bees either perished, or moved south. then post Ice age moved back, two times for the 2 major Ice ages. So I would think they moved north adapting were pushed south adapting both times in Africa co mingled. Non Ice age Africa is mostly desert, ICe age it was likely better habitat. Interesting discussion. But with all the movement and the movement caused by people, "Pure Breeds" likely are rare.
> GG


Pretty sure, GG, the bees have been formed way, way before any of the recent Ice Ages.
Talking at least 50M years ago.
Bees have been around that long ago.
So, really, these recent Ice Age related moves are very recent peanuts.

The oldest bee evidence was found in what is now - Africa, if I recall (just like the Hominids - actually formed in what is n0w Africa).
I am too lazy to google that at the moment, to double-check.


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## kilocharlie (Dec 27, 2010)

DNA testing with honeybees will only date back so many generations, not hundreds of years. This is because of the diverse mating of drones and queens, also due to the fact that some years, more than one queen uses a hive, mates, absconds, and moves on, then another takes up residence, lays, and if it is a good year, swarms off leaving the new queen in charge.

It takes some very strong isolation to limit the genetic diffusion (think of a drop of red dye spilled into the ocean, in one year it circumnavigates the entire globe), like perhaps honeybees living in Iceland will have some inbred tendencies. Strong selective pressure can change honeybee populations' traits in a hundred years quite drastically. Stable conditions will tend to promote the most favored traits for that set of conditions, but honeybees keep a HUGE diversity of "what if" genetic codes stored in them.


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## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

Good reply, kilocharlie. I appreciated the analogy.


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## kilocharlie (Dec 27, 2010)

Thank you, Russ, but the heavyweights on this topic are Juhani, Eduardo, Fusion Power, and yourself. It is very educational to hear from folks like these, Eduardo with a whole lot of hands-on experience with A.M. Iberica, Juhani also in Europe and an astute student of bees, Fusion Power with 50 years experience and some massive studies of his own -especially on the advantages and disadvantages of the many hive designs, and you put in nice post with and interesting link. Thank you!


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## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

kilocharlie said:


> Thank you, Russ, but the heavyweights on this topic are Juhani, Eduardo, Fusion Power...


kilocharlie: Thank you for including me in a list with these guys- I certainly hope to be deserving of such a distinction some day. I for one am grateful for experienced guys like yourself who are willing to patiently endure the rest of us who are diligently working and learning to get to where you all are. Thanks again for your insights- I've learned a lot from several things you've posted recently but only took the time to comment on this particular one. Thanks again.


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Eduardo Gomes said:


> A.m.iberiensis is a natural hybrid M and A lineage. A.m.mellifera (black bee) is M lineage. Photos of my a.m.iberisensis:
> View attachment 52117
> View attachment 52119
> View attachment 52121
> View attachment 52123


Eduardo Gomes, do your Spanish Black bees continuously breed drones through the winter at a moderate rate? I had a few hives (darker bees) that did that and was surprised, because from what I heard about the darker subspecies of honey bees like Caucasian and Carniolan being frugal through the winter compared to light colored Italian bees which are said to eat more. 



GregV said:


> Where did humans in Africa come from?
> 
> This is the same question.
> The bees and the Home spread in a very similar fashion.
> From the original Motherland - Africa.


That kind of makes sense. People in Africa are by far more diverse genetically. Even in Genesis I read something about when Adam and Eve were made they were somewhere like Ethiopia or something mentioned about Ethiopia...

I have seen old advertisements in bee magazines about selling Punic bee queens here in the US. I guess those would be A. m. intermissa. Maybe a mountain form to be cold hardy enough to live through our winters here in the US. Those also have thinner bands and look similar to the Spanish blacks and German blacks.

Apis mellifera intermissa video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HIXqgJFZGA


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

Adam and Eve were in the Garden and that was at the confluence of the Tigres and Euphrates rivers, which would be in modern day Iraq.


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## JWPalmer (May 1, 2017)

> Adam and Eve were in the Garden and that was at the confluence of the Tigres and Euphrates rivers, which would be in modern day Iraq.


Not that I believe this article, but some might beg to differ.
https://www.livescience.com/mitochondrial-eve-first-human-homeland.html
Point is that the origins of the honey bee may be in an area now completely inhospitable to them.


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## kilocharlie (Dec 27, 2010)

I'll pay $3.00 U.S for Adam's autograph if it's on a check or money order.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>Even in Genesis I read something about when Adam and Eve were made they were somewhere like Ethiopia or something mentioned about Ethiopia...
>>Not that I believe this article, but some might beg to differ.

The topic was Genesis. In your article they are talking about a possible person that they are metaphorically calling "Eve". The Bible in Genesis is talking about an actual "Eve" in an actual garden that is located in an actual place which is the confluence of the Tigres and Euphrates rivers. Whether either of these versions of the "Eve" story actually happened is of course taken on faith in one or another narrative. The original topic I was responding to was what the Bible said about the location.


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## Juhani Lunden (Oct 3, 2013)

Michael Bush said:


> The topic was Genesis.


The topic was... German Black bees.


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## Eduardo Gomes (Nov 10, 2014)

HaplozygousNut said:


> Eduardo Gomes, do your Spanish Black bees continuously breed drones through the winter at a moderate rate?


No. From late July drone breeding begins to decline and from October until March stops. Even worker-breeding stops in many hives between November and early January in the hives of my apiaries. Elsewhere in my country this calendar varies according to the availability of pollen in the field.


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Litsinger said:


> Glad to share. If there is one thing I would take away from the history of importation of bees into the Eastern US and the continued migratory practices of commercial beekeeping across the 'lower 48' it is that one might find a little bit of a lot of different bee 'races' in the background genetics of one's bee stock. So from my very humble perspective, it would not surprise me a bit if you were able to find traces of genetics of German and Spanish origin.


Yes, I think you are right! Buckfast bees alone could have brought in many different subspecies of honeybees. 

Quote from Buckfast bee article from Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckfast_bee#Heritage

_"The following is a list of the subspecies (and strains if stated) that were later included in the Buckfast breeding program by Brother Adam, not all were eventually included into the Buckfast breed: Buckfast (B1), A. m. ligustica (Ligurian strain; all other strains proved susceptible to Acarine, especially those imported from the U.S. and of an all-golden color), A. m. mellifera (Gale's French, Brown Provence, Swedish and Finnish strains; the Irish strain proved itself even more susceptible to Acarine than the British strain), A. m. cypria, A. m. carnica, A. m. cecropia, A. m. meda (Iraqi and Iranian strains), A. m. sahariensis, A. m. anatoliaca (Turkish and Armenian strains), A. m. caucasica, A. m. lamarckii, A. m. monticola (Mt. Elgon strain), A. m. adami and A. m. macedonica (Mt. Athos strain).[4]"
_
If the US imported the island subspecies of honeybees that are not doing so well with the importation of foreign subspecies of honeybees (such as the common Italian bees), we might be able to serve as a reservoir for those subspecies that are in danger, such as the Maltese and Cyprian honeybees, which are not doing so well. And, being on an island, which is a small amount of land, it would be easier to wipe out the subspecies. Here in the United States there is a vast amount of land, and so it would probably be hard to wipe out the genetics of these subspecies, as long as the climate is suitable for the subspecies of honeybee introduced (like the warmer southern parts of the US). 

It happens to be that both Egyptian and Spanish Black honeybees are said to have the special ability to breed pure even when foreign subspecies of bees are present. If this is true I wonder if it has helped them survive competition against the common Italian honeybee. They are both living in California and Florida (mild winter areas). 

The Ukrainian (A. m. macedonica), and Carpathian honeybee should be great for most of the United States climate. Most of what we have here in the U.S. is a seasonal climate of cold winters and hot summers from being on a continent. Being from Eastern Europe, their climate should be more similar to ours than the maritime influence of Western Europe and the Mediterranean. 

And the Eastern European forms of the German black bee should be great for the colder places with long winters like Canada. The Canadians should try them, maybe German black bees from Russia or the Ural mountains. They might not make as much honey as say Caucasian honeybees do, but in the harsh winters of Canada, just surviving the winters would be a great trait to have.



Michael Bush said:


> Adam and Eve were in the Garden and that was at the confluence of the Tigres and Euphrates rivers, which would be in modern day Iraq.


Sorry, I need to read that part in Genesis more carefully.


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## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

HaplozygousNut said:


> Yes, I think you are right! Buckfast bees alone could have brought in many different subspecies of honeybees.


Interesting information, Nathaniel. Thank you for sharing. I had not appreciated how many subspecies Brother Adam incorporated into his Buckfast bees. Reminds me that I need to read his "Breeding the Honeybee".


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## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

Litsinger said:


> Reminds me that I need to read his "Breeding the Honeybee".


Nathaniel:

Let me begin by thanking you for nudging me to finally read through this book (though I imagine this was not the intent of your post regarding Buckfast bees).

I've been holding-off because it is kind of like planning to climb Mount Everest. It proved to be every bit as challenging as I anticipated.

While not directly related to your question, I noted that Brother Adam made a statement in the book that may or may not be helpful to your purposes, namely speaking of the Intermissa group as a whole he writes:

_"There would be no point ... in describing these local types individually, as they all without exception possess the essential characteristics of the Intermissa. There are of course differences between them but these are mainly a matter of the degree in which a particular characteristic of the parent stock is manifested."_

He continues, _"In every case what we find are just the essential characteristics of the prototype in varying degrees of intensity."_

While he spends some time talking about the well-documented concerns with this group, namely propensity to brood diseases and ferocity, he does see great value in this group for cross-breeding purposes, chiefly for:_ "...its ability to build up in the spring from a mere handful of bees to a colony of great strength. I know of no other race which has this capacity to the same degree."_

So for us in the Southeast United States who have a genetic background of this group (regardless of their country of origin) we might chalk up some of the attendant inherent benefits and challenges of this group which show up in our regional stocks.


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## Juhani Lunden (Oct 3, 2013)

Litsinger said:


> namely propensity to brood diseases


In his book Adam sort of groups all black bees under Intermissa. This is in line with his belief that Intermissa from northern Africa is the "fore father" of all black bees in Europe, including iberiensis and mellifera mellifera. Very understandable logic. 

Propensity to brood diseases is a very bad thing in a country like Finland where every third bee yard has AFB spores. 

Keeps me away from this race, even there is a lot of proof about what Adam said, suitability for crossings, for instance the experiments what Ulf Gröhn from Sweden made with Lasö island black bees.


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## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

Juhani Lunden said:


> Keeps me away from this race, even there is a lot of proof about what Adam said, suitability for crossings, for instance the experiments what Ulf Gröhn from Sweden made with Lasö island black bees.


Juhani: I will apologize in advance if you have already addressed this, but do you have any of the Finnish bee in the genetic background of your breeding operation or did you start at square one with imported genetics?


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## Juhani Lunden (Oct 3, 2013)

Litsinger said:


> but do you have any of the Finnish bee in the genetic background of your breeding operation or did you start at square one with imported genetics?


Although I consider the formulation of your question strange, I try to answer.

The western honey bee is not native in Finland. It was imported from Sweden and Estonia in the late 18th century (year 1780 about, if remember correctly). 

So there actually is no Finnish bee. But to your relief, even Brother Adam wrote about Finnish black bees. 

There is nothing left of the 18th century imported black bees. We once tried to search them, and found black bees, which were all, in wing index studies, found to be perfect combinations of all our 4 imported honeyraces, mellifera, italian, carnica and caucasica.



Starting at square one in TF beekeeping is not wise. I understand starting at square one as something from the very beginning, where nothing has been done. 

I did start my varroa project with Buckfast bees, but very soon got my first Primosrki. Imported, but not square one.


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## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

Juhani Lunden said:


> I did start my varroa project with Buckfast bees, but very soon got my first Primosrki. Imported, but not square one.


Good day, Juhani. Thank you for your reply and I apologize that my question was not very precise.

That said, I believe your reply answered my inquiry perfectly. 

I was curious if you utilized local stocks as a genetic base for your initial breeding operations and whether those stocks contained any 'M' lineage in them.

If I understood your reply correctly, you began with Buckfast stock subsequently crossed with Primorsky stock. 

Thus, if I understand the Buckfast lineage correctly there is but scant M background in it, but what is there is derived from French, Finnish and Swedish strains. 

Thank you again for your reply.

Russ


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## Fusion_power (Jan 14, 2005)

I would like to post the exact mixture of genetics in Buckfast bees, but that would be an impossible task. Suffice to say that at least 20% of their heritage is from Mellifera and another large chunk is from Ligustica.

the races he used include: Mellifera, Ligustica, Cecropia, Anatoliaca, and Saharensis. Each brought a different set of traits to the table.


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## Juhani Lunden (Oct 3, 2013)

Litsinger said:


> If I understood your reply correctly, you began with Buckfast stock subsequently crossed with Primorsky stock.
> 
> Thus, if I understand the Buckfast lineage correctly there is but scant M background in it, but what is there is derived from French, Finnish and Swedish strains.


Yes, you understood correctly, but I have to add that before the use of my mating station (1995) there were couple years of free mating, and therefore, although continuously in use for almost 20 years, there might be tiny tiny small fractions of Finnish Italian and Black bees in my stock.

Brother Adam was in correspondence with Kalle Mäki, a former beekeeper who lived quite near my place. Adam was impressed about the wintering abilities of this race, how small clusters were able to survive the hard Finnish winter with minimal use of stores. Kalle posted some black queens to him. Brother Adam made experiments with these Finnish Black bee, but never merged it into his Buckfast stock. In the end of his experiments he concluded, that the Finnish Black bee is so mixed up and offspring with Buckfast so aggressive and swarmy, that he had to give up.


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## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

Fusion_power said:


> I would like to post the exact mixture of genetics in Buckfast bees, but that would be an impossible task. Suffice to say that at least 20% of their heritage is from Mellifera and another large chunk is from Ligustica.
> 
> the races he used include: Mellifera, Ligustica, Cecropia, Anatoliaca, and Saharensis. Each brought a different set of traits to the table.


Thank you, Fusion_power. I sincerely appreciate your reply. While researching Brother Adam's background, I ran across a website that maintains his breeding records for the years 1915 - 1993 (less the war years). It proved to be a fascinating way to waste an hour:

http://www.pedigreeapis.org/elver/ori/origin-en.html

If I interpret it correctly, it looks as though he employed a French AMM strain (Gale’s French) extensively in the 30's and 40's and a Finnish AMM strain starting in about 1971 until about 1982.

I also ran across this 2018 research suggesting that the mitochondrial genome still closely tracks with ligustica:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23802359.2018.1450660

Thank you again for your reply. I sincerely appreciate it!

Russ


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## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

Juhani Lunden said:


> Yes, you understood correctly, but I have to add that before the use of my mating station (1995) there were couple years of free mating, and therefore, although continuously in use for almost 20 years, there might be tiny tiny small fractions of Finnish Italian and Black bees in my stock.


Thank you for your reply, Juhani. I sincerely appreciate it.

My rationale for asking the question on this thread was curiosity as to how the local Finnish bee at the beginning of your breeding program might have compared to the local bee in the Southeast United States given that one might assume that both were likely mixtures of older AMM stock and newer Ligustica stock.

Thanks again for your feedback.

Russ


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## Juhani Lunden (Oct 3, 2013)

Litsinger said:


> a Finnish AMM strain starting in about 1971 until about 1982.


 http://perso.fundp.ac.be/~jvandyck/homage/elver/pedgr/ped_BA_1973.html

1973 is the last year he used Finnish stock to make grafts. After that Finnish AMM is used in different combinations mostly with Turkish Anatolian lines (Sinop), like here
http://perso.fundp.ac.be/~jvandyck/homage/elver/reines/F-386.77.html

but in the end the Finnish AMM was discarded totally. 

1982 is the last year Finnish AMM is mentioned among the races which form his stock. "N mellifera (black-brown)" is for the Finnish AMM
http://perso.fundp.ac.be/~jvandyck/homage/elver/pedgr/ped_BA_1982.html

- Races ...

A: anatolica
B: buckfast
E: lamarckii (Egyptian)
G: cecropia (Greek)
K: carnica
*N: mellifera (black-brown)*
T: macedonian Athos


In the list of races after year 1982 the Finnish AMM is not listed in the ancestors of his stock. 
For instance year 1986 
http://perso.fundp.ac.be/~jvandyck/homage/elver/pedgr/ped_BA_1986.html


-- Races ...

A: anatolica
B: buckfast
E: lamarckii (Egyptian)
S: sahariensis
T: macedonian Athos
Z: armenian

P.S. Similar experiments were made with Carnica, as is seen from the 1982 listing, but it never ended up in the main stock. Same reason too, eager to swarm was too excessive.


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## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

Juhani Lunden said:


> P.S. Similar experiments were made with Carnica, as is seen from the 1982 listing, but it never ended up in the main stock. Same reason too, eager to swarm was too excessive.


Thank you for clarifying, Juhani. I sincerely appreciate the feedback. It is amazing to consider the amount of effort and evaluation which was invested in the Buckfast, both in its initial development and its continued maintenance.

Thank you again, and have a great week.

Russ


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Juhani Lunden said:


> In his book Adam sort of groups all black bees under Intermissa. This is in line with his belief that Intermissa from northern Africa is the "fore father" of all black bees in Europe, including iberiensis and mellifera mellifera. Very understandable logic.
> 
> Propensity to brood diseases is a very bad thing in a country like Finland where every third bee yard has AFB spores.
> 
> Keeps me away from this race, even there is a lot of proof about what Adam said, suitability for crossings, for instance the experiments what Ulf Gröhn from Sweden made with Lasö island black bees.


Hmm... it is confusing to me when you say that German blacks have problems with brood diseases. From what I have heard they are especially good for going through long and wet winters of Northern Europe where they are native. And the German blacks seem rather close to Finland in range and so I would have thought they were likely best adapted for your conditions in Finland.


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## Juhani Lunden (Oct 3, 2013)

HaplozygousNut said:


> Hmm... it is confusing to me when you say that German blacks have problems with brood diseases. From what I have heard they are especially good for going through long and wet winters of Northern Europe where they are native. And the German blacks seem rather close to Finland in range and so I would have thought they were likely best adapted for your conditions in Finland.


AMM is adapted to long winters, that is for sure. Our winters have become wet, thanks climate change, but before this recent change a long cold winter is actually dry. Very often Finnish homes used to have an air humidifier, before they realized how they spread all kinds of spores, bacteria etc, too.

In a country where one third (1/3) of all bee yards have AFB spores, a propensity to brood diseases is major disadvantage. 

In the end of his book "Breeding the Honeybee" Brother Adam has a table of different races he did test during his lifetime. In this table there are Intermissa and West Eropean races. Resistance to brood diseases is one evaluated thing. Intermissa gets -4, the worst score of all listed races. West European races -3 and A.m.lehzeni (? what ever that is) which has -3. 

These are the only races with minus scores.


Italian bees +3,
Buckfast +3, 
Carnica +5


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Juhani Lunden, there could be misunderstanding about AFB being a terrible disease. I read in Les Crowder's Top Bar Hive book that it is actually the old black comb that makes the disease so bad and deadly, otherwise you could not infect a colony even if you tried to with AFB infested comb from an infested colony. If AFB was truly such a bad and contagious disease I don't think the USA would even have the ability to control an out-break if they tried. AFB is why we have inspections of our colonies here in the US, I was told. 

I believe that a lot of the bee diseases are not truly dangerous to honeybees, but become a problem in stressful or artificial conditions. In Les Crowder's Top-Bar hive book he says that he had problems with Chalk brood after he did almond pollination. The almond area was so saturated with fungicides that it killed the beneficial fungi in the bee bread so that the opportunistic Chalk brood fungus took over.

Apis mellifera lehzeni seems to be a strain of German black bee from Norway:
https://beekeeping.fandom.com/wiki/Apis_mellifera_mellifera

_"There are only a handful of colonies present in Germany, but larger numbers have survived in Norway (lehzeni), the Alps (*****) and Poland and Belgium (mellifera)."_


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

HaplozygousNut said:


> Hmm... it is confusing to me when you say that German blacks have problems with brood diseases. From what I have heard they are especially good for going through long and wet winters of Northern Europe where they are native. And the German blacks seem rather close to Finland in range and so I would have thought they were likely best adapted for your conditions in Finland.


One needs to step back and think - AMM are a very diverse group spread across from Ireland to the mountains of Ural and into the Siberia proper.
There is no other bee race more diverse than the AMM in their local adaptations (just due to the geographic span and the variety of local circumstances).
It maybe time to split the AMM into sub-races and well-defined, unique populations (in Russia they do exactly that, in fact).

This entire talk of the "German Blacks" is confusing, assumes some monolithic bee race I guess (not true), and going in circles anymore without clear definitions in place.

So, what is the "German Black" again?
What do you mean by it?
Black bees from Germany?
:scratch:


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## JWPalmer (May 1, 2017)

HaplozygousNut said:


> ... there could be misunderstanding about AFB being a terrible disease. I read in Les Crowder's Top Bar Hive book that ...


I think you need to broaden your reading horizons.


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## Fusion_power (Jan 14, 2005)

> A.m.lehzeni


 This is the Dutch Brown bee, a branch of Mellifera. Stating that A.m. mellifera are exceptionally predisposed to brood diseases is an understatement. They have a number of beneficial adaptions including exceptionally good wintering, always producing a crop of honey, and phenomenal buildup in spring. You can talk about how fast Carnica builds up in spring, but in comparison with Mellifera, they are almost standing still.

If you read some of Brother Adam's earlier writing, you will encounter A.m. Mellifica which was an early appellation applied to honeybees. There was quite a stink over this name as the Latin meaning has to do with the "honey carrying bee". The problem is that bees do not transport honey, they carry nectar. The nomenclature was changed about 1930 (I'm not sure of the exact date) leaving older publications with mellifica and newer with mellifera.



> there could be misunderstanding about AFB being a terrible disease.


 There is no misunderstanding. Read the history of the disease. Read about the number of beekeepers wiped out by it over the years. Your post comes across as someone who has never dealt with brood disease. When you have experienced it and know what it can do, you will be able to comment. For right now, you are like a man standing on the rim of Mount St. Helens just before it erupted 40 years ago.


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

The vile smell of AFB will be forever etched in my memory. I did, however always feel that AFB was more of a result than a cause of poor bees. Long before there there was any talk about hygienic behavior battling varroa there was a well founded belief that hygienic behavior was a prime reason why some hives tended to not have much in the way of overt symtoms of afb while others became badly infected and succumbed. In the heyday of the disease as I remember from the 60's and 70's is it would show up when bees were stressed (and tapping into old honey reserves no doubt) but often fade away with the onset of a nice pollen and nectar flow.


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## Roland (Dec 14, 2008)

Before Sulfa, it was the law that the hive must be burned and buried on the spot. Any piece of our woodenware from pre 1940 is scorched on the inside. Yes, AFB is a huge problem, especially when an antibiotic is readily available. It is also more common in strong hives, the weak ones can not rob another hive out.

Crazy Roland


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## kilocharlie (Dec 27, 2010)

Fusion, Jim L, and Roland -
Thank y'all for clarifying the topic of AFB. Yes, burning on the spot is still a valid treatment for AFB. Antibiotics (treatments in general, other than burning) just keep it around and spread it.


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

kilocharlie said:


> Fusion, Jim L, and Roland -
> Thank y'all for clarifying the topic of AFB. Yes, burning on the spot is still a valid treatment for AFB. Antibiotics (treatments in general, other than burning) just keep it around and spread it.


Bacteriophages (Viruses that eat bacteria and archaea) might be a good treatment instead of antibiotics. You could keep the hive free of chemicals, like antibiotics, and so sell uncontaminated honey. People are working on phage treatment for American Foulbrood from what I read on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phage_therapy#Other_animals Viruses are not always bad.


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Litsinger (Russ) has showed me an article about "German black bees" in California:
https://archive.org/stream/surveyofbeekeepi297vans/surveyofbeekeepi297vans_djvu.txt
_*"German. — The German bees are small and black. The "Spanish 
Bee ' ' of California is thought to be this same old German type which 
was brought into the state in early days by the Spanish Fathers. 
These bees are often vicious with both sting and mandibles. They are 
more susceptible to injury by the wax moth than the Italians. The 
"blacks" are particularly subject to the European foulbrood disease. 
Most beekeepers have attempted to abandon this race, yet traces of 
them are still prevalent in many parts of the state. The German- 
Italian hybrid is a very good combination, having enough spirit to 
protect the colony effectively against tramps or marauding skunks, 
etc. "*_

Back a long time ago the German Black bees and Spanish Black bees were thought to be the same bee, Apis mellifera mellifera. The book "Practical Queen Rearing" by Frank Pallett talks about German blacks and the bees in Spain of being the same kind of bee. There is a preview for the book on amazon, just click the picture of the book and you can look at the first pages where it talks about the Spanish black bees. 
https://www.amazon.com/Practical-Queen-Rearing-Classic-Reprint/dp/1332347193?tag=beesourceconvert-20
_*"Black bees are very generally supposed to have been first introduced in America from Germany but very probably they came first from Spain. The native black bees of Great Britain, France, Germany and Spain are said to vary but little."*_

Here is a video on YouTube of Russian Apis mellifera mellifera which seem to be pale white/lead grey banded instead of the dull brown bands I have seen of pictures of German black bees from Western Europe. These are from the Vyatka region in Russia, I was told by GregV (he showed me this video). These bees live in an area with a short season and a long winter. As GregV said, the Russian A. m. mellifera could be its own subspecies different from the Western European German black bees.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkNX2WBDy9g



HaplozygousNut said:


> Bacteriophages (Viruses that eat bacteria and archaea) might be a good treatment instead of antibiotics. You could keep the hive free of chemicals, like antibiotics, and so sell uncontaminated honey. People are working on phage treatment for American Foulbrood from what I read on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phage_therapy#Other_animals Viruses are not always bad.


Here in this article are other good things that viruses do:https://jvi.asm.org/content/jvi/89/13/6532.full.pdf


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## Juhani Lunden (Oct 3, 2013)

HaplozygousNut said:


> These bees are often vicious with both sting and mandibles. The
> "blacks" are particularly subject to the European foulbrood disease.
> 
> 
> ...


Pure _Apis mellifera mellifera_ is a very calm bee, which has one an easy to notice distinctive quality: it runs like honey towards the bottom bar of the frame. When holding one long enough, they drop of. The bees on the video are most certainly not mellifera mellifera bees, which don´t have so wide white stripes.One another sign in the structure of the real black bee is the end of abdomen which is blunt (versus sharp). 

In this video (German languge) various "black bees" are considered whether they are pure or not. In this era of false information I consider the man in the video, Kai-Michael Engfer, very informative about the subject _Apis mellifera mellifera_, genuine black bee of Europe. There are some nice pictures, for instance about the amount and colour of the stripes. And as he notices the purity can be determined from the wing veins. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqbU-fA-URs
The source of information he recommended: https://www.nordbiene.de/

And once again: there is no such race as German black bee. German black bee is the name for a strain of black looking bees in US.


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## BernhardHeuvel (Mar 13, 2013)

HaplozygousNut said:


> Hmm... it is confusing to me when you say that German blacks have problems with brood diseases.


I have German Black bees, also a variety of subspecies of them. Most of them even genetically tested to be pure. Including the formerly native Brown Bee that was kept here where I lived. 
All of them are nice bees, but all of them have the problems with all sorts of brood diseases. Very weak resistance to varroa. 

Those bees are long lived, with only small broodnests, they can't drain out brood diseases like the other bees do. 




GregV said:


> So, what is the "German Black" again?
> What do you mean by it?
> Black bees from Germany?


Apis mellifera mellifera (should be mellifica mellifica, since the bees actually produce the honey through fermentation, but that's another story)

Of course there are local varieties. But a totally foreign bee adapts to local conditions in two seasons as some studies found out. So there are local varieties of Buckfast, too. Or Carnica. Or... Life adapts. What a surprise.




Juhani Lunden said:


> Pure _Apis mellifera mellifera_ is a very calm bee, which has one an easy to notice distinctive quality: it runs like honey towards the bottom bar of the frame. When holding one long enough, they drop of. [/url]


+1 That's true. A pain in the ***** to work with frames, nice on fixed comb hives. 

I still keep those bees in my local gene pool, because the two properties 1) long living and 2) foraging on a wider range of flowers (they forage even on very small herbs and flowers, that other bees ignore).

Both properties probably can be of an advantage on a changing environment in the future.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

If care to translate, here is a good summary of Russian variants of AMM:

https://www.researchgate.net/public..._HONEYBEE_Apis_mellifera_mellifera_Lblack_bee

Specifically, pages 33-34 outline the grading criteria applicable to the Russian AMMs.

For sure, AMM is not some uniform bee where some "uniformed standards" are applicable.
If any standards are used, they only make sense on certain localized AMM populations.

Also, the Russian variants of AMM are poor foragers on multi-varietal sources (where the Caucasians win over the AMM handily, for example).
The opposite is the case - the AMMs are strong at mono-varietal, late flows.


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## BernhardHeuvel (Mar 13, 2013)

GregV said:


> For sure, AMM is not some uniform bee where some "uniformed standards" are applicable.
> 
> The opposite is the case - the AMMs are strong at mono-varietal, late flows.


Those both sentences are contradictory. AMMs are known for the wide range of floral sources they forage on, EXCEPT their Russian stepsisters, who do the opposite. 

You should first read stuff like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_dark_bee and then actually get yourself some dark bees. 

Then you can write about it, making bold statements. 

Not the other way round.

Just my 2 cents.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

My "bold" statements are just statements from the literature (careful enough to drag along some sources).
The Russian stepsisters, I suppose, are insignificant according to you.
Fine.

As well I can read Wikipedia in multiple languages - FYI.
But thanks.

Like I said:
"Also, the Russian variants of AMM are poor foragers on multi-varietal sources (where the Caucasians win over the AMM handily, for example).
The opposite is the case - the AMMs are strong at mono-varietal, late flows."

"the AMM ~ the Russian variants of AMM" in the paragraph - *clearly*. 
All I am talking about - the Russian AMMs. 
Nothing else.


As far as the "black bees" - first 18 years of my life spent right in the middle of the "black bee" yard.
Yes, I know some about the potatoes and the "black bees".


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## BernhardHeuvel (Mar 13, 2013)

And what are you up to the next 18 years?


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Juhani Lunden said:


> Pure _Apis mellifera mellifera_ is a very calm bee, which has one an easy to notice distinctive quality: it runs like honey towards the bottom bar of the frame. When holding one long enough, they drop of. The bees on the video are most certainly not mellifera mellifera bees, which don´t have so wide white stripes.One another sign in the structure of the real black bee is the end of abdomen which is blunt (versus sharp).
> 
> In this video (German languge) various "black bees" are considered whether they are pure or not. In this era of false information I consider the man in the video, Kai-Michael Engfer, very informative about the subject _Apis mellifera mellifera_, genuine black bee of Europe. There are some nice pictures, for instance about the amount and colour of the stripes. And as he notices the purity can be determined from the wing veins.
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqbU-fA-URs
> ...


Yes, Juhani Lunden, I have read that in reality the true/pure German black bees are actually a gentle bee. Not aggressive as what people commonly believe. I have suspected that the German black bees have gotten this bad reputation from misidentification of Spanish Black bees in the Southeastern US, that is if it is true what I suspect, that indeed it was the Spanish black bees that were the dominant subspecies in the Southeastern US before the introduction of the Italian bees. 

Spanish black bees are, from what I read aggressive, and nervous on the comb. They also are particularly susceptible to brood diseases, I have read. 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apis_mellifera_iberiensis


Actually the "German black bees" in the article I linked were said to be from Spain, and so they are Spanish black bees, not German black bees. At the time, Spanish Black bees were considered the same subspecies as the German blacks bees, Apis mellifera mellifera. Which makes sense when the article talks about the "German black bees" being an aggressive kind of bee. The climate would suit the Spanish black bees in California well, too, I think.
https://archive.org/stream/surveyofbeekeepi297vans/surveyofbeekeepi297vans_djvu.txt

Yes! I would like to try looking at the wing veins of bee colonies we have with narrow rings on abdomen. If the cubital index is negative, or close, then it would show the M lineage is truly in our bee colonies here in North Carolina. I have a microscope that was given to me by a friend. Are the Spanish black bees, like the German black bees, negative, on the cubital index? I will have to look up the cubital indexes for the different subspecies of bees again.

The black bees in the Russian video I linked do have a lot of variation in their band thickness. I did wonder whether they had a percentage of Caucasian in them, especially because of their lead grey bands of hair that Caucasian bees are known to have, and because the Russians from what I have been reading seemed to praise the Caucasian bees as being great bees. But also, in that video there are a fair amount of them that have narrow bands on their abdomens, and still being lead grey banded in colour. I was thinking that maybe this Russian strain of A. m. mellifera had pale/lead grey bands of hair on their abdomens' naturally without Caucasian mixture. From what I have seen in pictures of A. m. mellifera from Western Europe, they are dull brown banded.

Please watch again the bee on the dandelion at 3:15 in the video to see the thin, light grey rings of hair: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkNX2WBDy9g

This Russian strain of A. m. mellifera might have better brood disease resistance than the other strains of A. m. mellifera because of coming from a cold winter climate where they are cooped up in their hive for long periods of time without cleansing flights during winter. People should try them in Canada, or Alaska, and where you are in Finland.  You did say though you have a mixture of A. m. mellifera in your genetics.


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## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

Juhani Lunden said:


> The source of information he recommended: https://www.nordbiene.de/


This is a great website, Juhani. The auto-translate function works very well too. There is quite a lot of good bee race information on the website beyond that of AMM.

I watched the video and gleaned quite a bit from it despite the language barrier.

Thank you for sharing the information.

Russ


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Video of a dark thorax haired drone. I even have a colony that has mostly, if not all, dark haired drones (I will try to get video of that colony's drones). The worker bees and queen don't look much different from Italian or Carniolan, but I think that the golden colour in the queens is a dominant trait and so even though the queen is mostly golden, she could have a higher percentage of a dark kind of bee than she shows. Also, drones only take half the genes from their mother queen, they are haploid. So it is possible that this particular drone in the video took half the genes of the queen that were the dark thorax hair and left the other half. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ez4pM0r-Vlk



HaplozygousNut said:


> Bacteriophages (Viruses that eat bacteria and archaea) might be a good treatment instead of antibiotics. You could keep the hive free of chemicals, like antibiotics, and so sell uncontaminated honey. People are working on phage treatment for American Foulbrood from what I read on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phage_therapy#Other_animals Viruses are not always bad.


The bacteriophages have "phage lysins" that cut through endospores. AFB has endospores which make it hard to treat with antibiotics, but these bacteriophages might have something better than antibiotics that beekeepers use to treat AFB.

Look at "DEVELOPMENT AND APPLICATION OF PHAGE-DERIVED LYTIC PROTEINS" in the article link below about phage therapy.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5547374/


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Here, I have got a few videos of the thinner banded bees that we have in our colonies here in North Carolina:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJwaUrGD8UU

The darker haired drone colony with the thinner banded bees I mentioned in above post had been superceded probably in February, so the drones were starting to get a mixture of light and dark haired drones, but still some dark thorax haired drones were present when I took this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QX7dwDatYjw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSmnx7WM1vY&feature=youtu.be


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## AR1 (Feb 5, 2017)

After all the crossbreeding of many different strains of bees imported into the US, only genome typing can tell the ancestry of a bee. 

The way gene crossing works, after a few generations a golden bee could be a nearly 'pure' Caucasian or Russian. And the opposite, a black bee could be almost entirely Italian in every other trait than color. Same with wing conformation.


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## challenger (May 27, 2009)

Eduardo Gomes said:


> A.m.iberiensis is a natural hybrid M and A lineage. A.m.mellifera (black bee) is M lineage. Photos of my a.m.iberisensis:
> View attachment 52117
> View attachment 52119
> View attachment 52121
> View attachment 52123


I dunno, they look like regular old bees to me? I've had many black queens. Why does any of it matter? If they are easier to keep alive I'll take a couple of queens off your hands 😜


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## Trin (May 6, 2020)

So to sort this out all we need to find is a piece of amber with a honeybee trapped? And an extractable bit of DNA. But how do we tell that such a specimen is not one of several other subspecies?

I asked a genetic scientist friend "can the genetic code of a living person be changed by environment or even by how they think" The point being that there have been claims that a persons genes contribute to issues like vulnerability to alcoholism. The next question was more philosophical; Can sin cause genetic damage? 

There is a lot we don't know, trying to figure it out is what we humans do. Would be nice to have a nano-robot bee that sniffs out and kills varroa.


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## BattenkillJB (May 9, 2012)

I have seen Spanish bees in Southern Spain. They are large and very aggressive as a hybrid that became its own subspecies. Who knows if any traits survived after all this time. I personally wouldn’t want to manage them. Certainly not for hobby breaking.


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

AR1 said:


> After all the crossbreeding of many different strains of bees imported into the US, only genome typing can tell the ancestry of a bee.
> 
> The way gene crossing works, after a few generations a golden bee could be a nearly 'pure' Caucasian or Russian. And the opposite, a black bee could be almost entirely Italian in every other trait than color. Same with wing conformation.


I have thought about that, too! Similar to "phenotype" verses "genotype". But if I understand you correctly with the crossbreeding of the different subspecies of honeybees, one subspecies can take certain genes or traits from another subspecies, yet retain the majority of the genetic make-up of its own subspecies. Even though it has certain traits of another subspecies, those traits would be superficial and only a few genes, but still may be very noticeable traits to us, such as dark coloration or light coloration. Tardigrades are known to steal genes from other species.



But, even if this is true, and for example, a population of Italian bees do steal certain traits from other subspecies of bees, yet remain mostly Italian genetically, why are several of these known Spanish Black bee traits I am seeing coming along together?

It is a strange coincidence that whenever I see thin banded bees, I also see several of these other Spanish Black bee traits along with the thin bands. 

There must be a reason for this coincidence. Some force of nature seems to be holding these Spanish Black bee traits together. I think it has something to do with the Spanish Black bee traits being tied to the genetics of the Spanish black bee so that the Spanish Black bees retain, or at least have a tendency to the traits of Spanish Black bees over the generations.



Whenever I find thin banded bees, I also see a translucent coloration which makes them shinier which makes them look sick from chronic acute paralysis virus from a heavy varroa mite infestation. (Does this translucentness have anything to do with _*"The closing membrane of the cells is watery, the breeding is sensitive to some diseases"*_ written here on Wikipedia? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apis_mellifera_iberiensis#Morphology) But they are healthy and naturally look like that. In the video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJwaUrGD8UU) you can see the translucentness cleartly in the lighter colored, thin banded bees. They probably have a percentage of Italian, but maybe not as much as the light coloration would suggest, because I have a suspicion that light coloration in bees is dominant over dark. A bee genetics expert would probably know for certain whether it is a dominant trait.

This would explain why those light colored, thin banded worker bees in the video otherwise look to be a high percentage of Spanish Black or German Black bee, despite having the light coloration.

You can see in the video that those light colored, thin banded workers also have a particular abdomen shape same as the dark thin banded bees in the video. Do you notice the same? Carniolans are said to have a "torpedo" shaped narrow abdomen. Here is a Russian article comparing Carniolan and German Black bees. It shows pictures comparing the two subspecies: https://studepedia.org/index.php?vol=2&post=51906

I have recently seen the "torpedo" shaped abdomens in a darker colony, and it was very distinct. I think this "torpedo" shaped abdomen trait may be more obvious with foundationless, smaller cell colonies, because I don't remember seeing this trait before when I was using foundation. Our bees definitely get smaller after going foundationless, and then larger again when going back to foundation.

The thin banded bees in the video also have wings that are held up high as if ready for action. The wings look kind of narrow like Spanish Black bees to me, do you think so, too? I haven't actually measured them though.
Here, you can see about the wings on Spanish black bees in this video of real Spanish Black bees: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ak2l5A3Jzig


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

BattenkillJB said:


> I have seen Spanish bees in Southern Spain. They are large and very aggressive as a hybrid that became its own subspecies. Who knows if any traits survived after all this time. I personally wouldn’t want to manage them. Certainly not for hobby breaking.


That is nice! Where in southern Spain were you? You might have had a mixture of Apis mellifera intermissa. There are some A. m. intermissa mixture in the southern tip of Spain.

I use a 3 layer full bee suit. It has styrofoam to keep a space between the two fabric layers so that a bee stinger cannot sting you. It works very well for me. Even with more docile colonies I think it is good to use this full suit because being stung too much may be bad for your health. Also, rubber gloves are better than leather bee gloves. The bees love to sting leather, but rubber the bees will slide off when trying to sting. Less stings, less alarm pheromone, so less aggressive response from the bees overall.

Aggression could actually be a good trait sometimes. I think it would be good breeding for "bear resistance". lol


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## AR1 (Feb 5, 2017)

My bees tend dark, brown to black with no yellow bees. Some have blunt abdomens and some narrower and sharply pointed, almost wasp-like. No idea what the race these bees might be, they were a swarm. But very docile. No bee suit, just a veil, long sleeve shirt and thin gloves. 

If you are seeing a typical suite of characteristics, it's probably because that is what resulted from the mix of bees in your neighborhood going back many years. Maybe Spanish, German, Russian, plus whatever. If they make honey and don't sting the neighbors, they are all good. It would be fun though to get some university lab to gene-type them, just to know.


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## BernhardHeuvel (Mar 13, 2013)

How do you recognise black bees: if they have a brood disease of some sort, it is a black bee. I tried so many varieties and all of them were very susceptible for brood diseases.


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## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

Nathaniel:

Watched this talk and thought of you- Dr. Debbie Delaney talks about the NC 'Feral Bee Project' starting at about the 38 minute mark- interesting stuff:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MI9uuSUtpZI


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

AR1 said:


> My bees tend dark, brown to black with no yellow bees. Some have blunt abdomens and some narrower and sharply pointed, almost wasp-like. No idea what the race these bees might be, they were a swarm. But very docile. No bee suit, just a veil, long sleeve shirt and thin gloves.
> 
> If you are seeing a typical suite of characteristics, it's probably because that is what resulted from the mix of bees in your neighborhood going back many years. Maybe Spanish, German, Russian, plus whatever. If they make honey and don't sting the neighbors, they are all good. It would be fun though to get some university lab to gene-type them, just to know.


Well, I don't think we have a typical suite of characteristics. Our bees here are a mixture of different "suites of characteristics" from what I have seen and can tell. Many I have seen come with a "suite of characteristics" that Italian bees are said to have and others come with a "suite of characteristics" of Carniolan bees (I could easily be misidentifying for similar subspecies such as Ukrainian and Carpathian since they share many characteristics.). 
Also, with some colonies showing a "suite of characteristics" of Spanish Black bees as can be seen in the video I linked (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJwaUrGD8UU) of a colony of our bees here. This makes me think that each subspecies has actually retained many of their traits despite being mixed and despite being introduced to a new climate and environment here in the New World. 

But, yes... I have read that at least some of the traits of our bees here in America have changed over time. And, I have read an article about the East African subspecies of A. m. scutellata, A. m. monticola, A. m. litoria, all being the same subspecies genetically, just different phenotypically. It could be simply that our bees here in America have not had enough time (a few hundred years) here in the New World to change drastically yet, but are in the process of changing.


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

challenger said:


> I dunno, they look like regular old bees to me? I've had many black queens. Why does any of it matter? If they are easier to keep alive I'll take a couple of queens off your hands ��


Okay. Eduardo Gomez's Spanish Black bees have thicker bands and smaller, rounder abdomens than other typical Spanish Black bees. It makes them more similar in general appearance to our commonly raised Carniolans. Here is a video of more obviously thin banded Spanish Black bees to compare: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ak2l5A3Jzig

I have even read on a bee journal article that the Spanish black bees in Portugal genetically belong to its own subset of "A" lineage, if I remember correctly. That might mean that the Portugal strain of Spanish Black bees are actually a different subspecies from the Spanish Black bee, Apis mellifera iberiensis.


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Now I am leaning more towards Tunisian bees for the thin banded bees that we have, though we may have all three, German black and Spanish black and Tunisian bees for all I know!

Here is a video talking about Tunisian bees:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jo4W0TRdEpI

Here I made a video of looking for German black bees in pictures of bees in Bee Journals:
https://studio.youtube.com/video/pC5NAIHGR_A/edit/basic


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIpQYFsX1JA
Do Tunisian bees have large black haired drones like Caucasian bees do? I had a colony with large dark haired drones bred from this mother colony: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJwaUrGD8UU


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Here are videos of Apis mellifera intermissa from YouTube to compare:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjcnhJsY-JY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HIXqgJFZGA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzGLnZPE6a4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5ttGhTnkR8 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fb_pkcNRKXc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mCHhsEcr58 (the bees are easiest to see if you skip to 4:08 in video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIJ4liR_keE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJyDJxtHSOg (drones at 4:24 in this video! A. m. intermissa?)

Broader banded Tunisian bee?:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfuyF2dxT6E

Video of very shiny dark A. m. intermissa!:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7WL8K6XOXU

Our thin banded colonies here in North Carolina: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJwaUrGD8UU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8sDMq5t2Ms
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFMRz2csflk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpxL1i60mRc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3UA5gOzbjE

A photo of light thin banded bees:


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

This colony we have here in North Carolina has lighter bees with thick bands: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8sDMq5t2Ms&t=44s (sorry for bad, shaky video!)

I am wondering whether it is possible that these have Saharan bee (Apis mellifera sahariensis) genetics in them because of the lighter color, and because I have read from here (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23802359.2017.1365647) that Saharan bees live in areas where the temperature can get cold:
*"It has the ability to adapt to extreme conditions like temperatures in Saharan zones ranging from −10 °C to over 50 °C to drought conditions (Adjlane et al. 2016) and high altitudes (Haccour 1960)."*

Light colored, thin banded Saharan bee video on YouTube to compare:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bP5nwch_4nc

Saharan bee picture from Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apis_...النحل_الصحراوي_Apis_mellifera_sahariensis.jpg



























I still doubt that we have Saharan bees here in North Carolina because we have a humid climate, while the Saharan desert is very dry.

We still do get a little heat or dry dormancy during our summer, which you can see in these Tulip poplars loosing leaves in July 25th 2020:


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

German black bees may actually be the common M lineage bee here in North Carolina, rather than what I thought it being Spanish black that were dominant of the M lineage here in North Carolina. 

Here is a colony that I suspect has a fair percentage of German black:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfDfVGVflVI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kFWgvl0jac

It is exceptional in gentleness, and propilizes little. They are very calm on comb. They have a good percentage of bees with thin bands on the 5th tergite, yet they look kind of different from the common Tunisian like bees that we have here in North Carolina. They seem to have somewhat broad abdomens from the best I can tell, I might be wrong though! I will have to compare to Carniolan bees to make sure these are not just your ordinary Carniolan. The article about the Black bee breeder in Scotland (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pC5NAIHGR_A) had genetically tested almost pure A. m. mellifera that had broader bands that looked similar to Carniolan bees, so I thought these could be of a similar strain to his German black bees. 

The colony's mother is this colony:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooJ4KtV_F6c&list=PLl6zsdvnE8NFgA3v0Bl3cvQoBTptVmqlW&index=7
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjhYWlsAJvo&list=PLl6zsdvnE8NFgA3v0Bl3cvQoBTptVmqlW&index=6


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Video of Saharan bees? 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hA8s72lBZU

Apis mellifera monticola drone. Very dark in color! 
https://beesource.com/point-of-view...oa-resistant-honey-bee/monticola-picture-log/


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

I think the video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hA8s72lBZU) is of Saharan bees from Quarzazate, Morocco. The climate there does get a mild winter. 

I looked up the climate of Quarzazate on Google:

*Ouarzazate, Morocco
Weather averages
Overview
Graphs
Month High / Low(°F)Rain
January 62° / 37°1 day
February 67° / 41°1 day
March 72° / 48°1 day
April 79° / 53°0 days
May 86° / 60°0 days
June 95° / 67°1 day
July 101° / 73°0 days
August 99° / 72°1 day
September 91° / 65°1 day
October 81° / 56°1 day
November 70° / 46°1 day
December 63° / 39°1 day*

Here are a couple more videos of the colony with the light colored, thin banded bees:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9IZ0dQo13c (especially light colored one at 1:51 in the video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIhYPjgleyI

If these are Saharan bees here in North Carolina, they were probably brought here by the Buckfast bee. Brother Adams added Saharan into his breeding Buckfast bees. 

Buckfast bee heritage: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckfast_bee#Heritage

The Saharan bees naturally forage on Date palms in their range. I have planted Medjool date seeds here in North Carolina and they have survived a couple winters so far. They are actually more cold hardy than the young Coast Redwoods which die of frost and cold nights during winter, that is, if they do not get to a critical size to survive the cold. Figs, too, need to grow to a large enough stem thickness to survive cold nights during winter here in North Carolina.


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

HaplozygousNut said:


> Okay. Eduardo Gomez's Spanish Black bees have thicker bands and smaller, rounder abdomens than other typical Spanish Black bees. It makes them more similar in general appearance to our commonly raised Carniolans. Here is a video of more obviously thin banded Spanish Black bees to compare: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ak2l5A3Jzig
> 
> I have even read on a bee journal article that the Spanish black bees in Portugal genetically belong to its own subset of "A" lineage, if I remember correctly. That might mean that the Portugal strain of Spanish Black bees are actually a different subspecies from the Spanish Black bee, Apis mellifera iberiensis.


Here, this is the image I saw about the Portuguese strain of Spanish Black bee being its own sub class of the "A" lineage:
https://www.nature.com/articles/6888420/figures/1



HaplozygousNut said:


> Well, I don't think we have a typical suite of characteristics. Our bees here are a mixture of different "suites of characteristics" from what I have seen and can tell. Many I have seen come with a "suite of characteristics" that Italian bees are said to have and others come with a "suite of characteristics" of Carniolan bees (I could easily be misidentifying for similar subspecies such as Ukrainian and Carpathian since they share many characteristics.).
> Also, with some colonies showing a "suite of characteristics" of Spanish Black bees as can be seen in the video I linked (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJwaUrGD8UU) of a colony of our bees here. This makes me think that each subspecies has actually retained many of their traits despite being mixed and despite being introduced to a new climate and environment here in the New World.
> 
> But, yes... I have read that at least some of the traits of our bees here in America have changed over time. And, I have read an article about the East African subspecies of A. m. scutellata, A. m. monticola, A. m. litoria, all being the same subspecies genetically, just different phenotypically. It could be simply that our bees here in America have not had enough time (a few hundred years) here in the New World to change drastically yet, but are in the process of changing.


Actually, my memory was wrong about the A. m. litoria being genetically the same as A. m. scutellata. The article I read was just suggesting that possibility because of A. m. monticola being the same subspecies genetically as A. m. scutellata. 

At an angle the suspected Saharan bees look very shiny and hairless (sorry, the low light probably made the bad photos):















Looking at a few colonies so far I think the Saharan bees are also somewhat common like the Tunisian like bees here in North Carolina. That would mean that the A lineage is common in our North Carolina bees? Has there been any genetic testing for the A lineage here in the Southeastern US other than Southern Florida where African scutellata bees are known to be?


Madagascar or Malagasy bees, A. m. unicolor, are also similar in looks to A. m. intermissa, but I don't know if they would be cold hardy enough to live here in North Carolina. I don't even know of A. m. unicolor being imported here to the New World. I do know that some species of Malagasy poison dart frogs in the pet trade need a few months of cold or cool period dormancy to be healthy. Maybe those frogs are from the mountains of Madagascar?

Madagascar weather:
https://www.weather-forecast.com/maps/Madagascar

Video of bees in Madagascar (very dark drones!):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46pqYC3RKdI


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

HaplozygousNut said:


> Well, I don't think we have a typical suite of characteristics. Our bees here are a mixture of different "suites of characteristics" from what I have seen and can tell. Many I have seen come with a "suite of characteristics" that Italian bees are said to have and others come with a "suite of characteristics" of Carniolan bees (I could easily be misidentifying for similar subspecies such as Ukrainian and Carpathian since they share many characteristics.).
> Also, with some colonies showing a "suite of characteristics" of Spanish Black bees as can be seen in the video I linked (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJwaUrGD8UU) of a colony of our bees here. This makes me think that each subspecies has actually retained many of their traits despite being mixed and despite being introduced to a new climate and environment here in the New World.
> 
> But, yes... I have read that at least some of the traits of our bees here in America have changed over time. And, I have read an article about the East African subspecies of A. m. scutellata, A. m. monticola, A. m. litoria, all being the same subspecies genetically, just different phenotypically. It could be simply that our bees here in America have not had enough time (a few hundred years) here in the New World to change drastically yet, but are in the process of changing.


Now that I am looking at different kinds of bees on YouTube, like Syrian bees, Iranian bees, Greek bees, Anatolian bees, I don't really know what kinds of bees we have in our colonies. What I used to assume as just Italian or Carniolan could be a mix of all sorts of bee subspecies. Genetic testing would help very much since these bees all look very similar!

A. m. adami (http://bee-adami.blogspot.com/2017/01/apis-mellifera-adami.html) from Crete are similar in looks to A. m. intermissa. It is quite possible I have overlooked some dark thin banded bees as A. m. intermissa when actually they are A. m. adami or something else similar.


So far I have been getting just negatives and 0s on the discoidal shift when measuring our bees, even with lighter bees. I have not done many colonies yet. It could be that I am not measuring the discoidal shift correctly. Hopefully I will find some positives so that I will know that I am measuring correctly. I place the wing on the clear plastic of a lantern so that I have a good view with the light shinning through from underneath the wing.

Website about discoidal shift and German black bees (pictures):
http://www.bees.me.uk/Bees/Morphometry.html
*
"The influence of small-cell brood combs on the morphometry of honeybees (Apis mellifera)"*
https://www.researchgate.net/public...n_the_morphometry_of_honeybees_Apis_mellifera

Does anyone have information about the discoidal shift of other subspecies of honeybees? Like the discoidal shift for West Anatolian, Eastern Anatolian, Iranian (A. m. meda), Tunisian?


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Here is an article about the Cretan bee (Apis mellifera adami) in Greek. You can translate to English using Google Translate. 
https://agonigrammi.wordpress.com/2011/06/03/h-εξαφάνιση-της-κρητικής-μέλισσας-apis-mellifera-adami/


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

This range map of A. m. intermissa, major, and sahariensis shows A. m. major as the bee ranging into southern Spain.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Apis_mellifera_intermissa+sahariensis+major.svg


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## n8app155 (Jun 3, 2020)

here you go.
https://www.osbeehives.com/blogs/beekeeping-blog/types-of-honey-bee-and-their-traits


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

HaplozygousNut said:


> This range map of A. m. intermissa, major, and sahariensis shows A. m. major as the bee ranging into southern Spain.
> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Apis_mellifera_intermissa+sahariensis+major.svg


Sorry, the map I linked above is the wrong map! Here in the website linked below is the range map showing the A. m. major going up into southern Spain.
https://aberdeenbeekeepers.net/bees/


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Here in this article there is a photo of German black bees from Airole, Imperia, Italy. The German black bees there in Italy are thicker banded. There is even a photo of A. m. sicula that are very thin banded on the same page:
http://www.bulletinofinsectology.org/pdfarticles/vol71-2018-257-271fontana.pdf

More videos of the suspected German black bee colony:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuTO5nUYOLQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-n8-Lvjkz7w
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iks1pk-HlDs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpMYHi2zAwI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lp2ghv4EXOc


They are more nervous and aggressive now that they are longer into the summer dearth. So they may not really be so exceptional in gentleness as I had thought.

Another genetic range map of the different lineages of honeybees:
https://www.researchgate.net/figure...ve-range-using-COI-COII-region_fig1_317389459

Here are some photos of the suspected German black colony (sorry for the bad quality!):


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Here is a photo of A. m. intermissa with lighter haired drones:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipe..._النحل_التلي3.jpg/440px-ملكة_النحل_التلي3.jpg

The picture is from the Arabic Wikipedia A. m. intermissa article: https://www.wikiwand.com/ar/نحل_تلياني

A couple more videos and pictures of Madagascar or Malagasy bees (A. m. unicolor):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4aHsSnmC3Q
https://www.facebook.com/SEEDMadagascar/posts/10155779593318603
https://in.pinterest.com/pin/291537775882695246/
https://madagascar.co.uk/projects/sustainable-livelihoods/renitantely

Does anyone have any photos or videos of A. m. major? 


Here are videos of other colonies of thinner banded, wide abdomen bees that I think are German black mixture:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBmCBtXSr3k (Thin banded one at 2:14 in video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4d3YhK-409I
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsorpw_98sA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p096AyxVBNk

These thick banded, wide abdomen bees, that I suspect are German black, may have come from imports of Italian or Ligurian bees from Liguria or nearby that area in Italy. They look similar to the picture of thick banded German black bees from Italy in this article:
http://www.bulletinofinsectology.org/pdfarticles/vol71-2018-257-271fontana.pdf


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Mixture of dark thorax hair and light thorax hair drones at 3:43 in this video of bees in Algeria:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yxRCj6AZFI

Video of Dark thorax haired drones at 2:55 in video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXyb6g8mOY8

Photo of dark thin banded bees from Tangier, Morocco?:
https://www.facebook.com/pg/أخبار-طنجة-882359665215804/photos/?tab=album&album_id=1207906342661133


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## n8app155 (Jun 3, 2020)

Could they be Caucasian bees?


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## Tigger19687 (Dec 27, 2014)

I'm trying to figure out which mutt added the black tipped butt to my bees.  I have a Buckfast mix that spun off 2 queen cells that I made new hives with. I have no idea what is around here but I would say at least 1/2 of both the spun off hives have this butt black color.
I have a video but will try to get some pics of them. They walk a bit faster then the other bees so it has been hard to get them to stay still. I will try to get some this evening when they get a bit more settled to photograph.
https://youtu.be/LM9LSYfNOjA


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## Juhani Lunden (Oct 3, 2013)

HaplozygousNut said:


> Does anyone have information about the discoidal shift of other subspecies of honeybees? Like the discoidal shift for West Anatolian, Eastern Anatolian, Iranian (A. m. meda), Tunisian?


Friedrich Ruttner writes in "Naturgeschiche der Honigbienen", page 58, that the DS (discoidal shift) is negative only by Amm (black bees of Northern Europe), "all other European races have positive values".


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## Juhani Lunden (Oct 3, 2013)

Tigger19687 said:


> I'm trying to figure out which mutt added the black tipped butt to my bees. I have a Buckfast mix that spun off 2 queen cells that I made new hives with. I have no idea what is around here but I would say at least 1/2 of both the spun off hives have this butt black color.
> I have a video but will try to get some pics of them. They walk a bit faster then the other bees so it has been hard to get them to stay still. I will try to get some this evening when they get a bit more settled to photograph.
> https://youtu.be/LM9LSYfNOjA


The race of a bee cannot be figured out just by the color. 

There is no color which is used only by one race, plus the variation inside a race is significant.


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## Fusion_power (Jan 14, 2005)

Bees here in the U.S. are a royal mix of genetics from about 10 subspecies dominated by Italian, Dutch Mellifera, and Carniolan. The others are in small clusters such as Iberian in New Mexico, Lamarckii in Florida, etc. None of them are "pure" in any sense of the word. Brother Adam's breeding work gave us a dash of Saharensis, Cecropia, etc. The Africanized bees moving up through South America, central America, and into the Southwest gave us Scutellata. The only way to verify anything regarding genetics is with DNA analysis.


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## joebeewhisperer (May 13, 2020)

Tigger19687 said:


> I'm trying to figure out which mutt added the black tipped butt to my bees. I have a Buckfast mix that spun off 2 queen cells that I made new hives with. I have no idea what is around here but I would say at least 1/2 of both the spun off hives have this butt black color.
> I have a video but will try to get some pics of them. They walk a bit faster then the other bees so it has been hard to get them to stay still. I will try to get some this evening when they get a bit more settled to photograph.
> https://youtu.be/LM9LSYfNOjA


I have your black butts open feeding today. I have asked several ppl what they are, and the answer I get on forums is feral. I assumed for the last 4 years that they were kept by a park ranger near my home, as this is the direction they fly. We also have jet black shiny bees from a tree about 3/8 mile from home. These I have some experience with, and if they interbreed with Italians, you can get some angry bees. We always called them German, but I really have no idea. They are very distinct. Dad and I hived a colony from a tree in the 80's and they were not any more aggressive than anyone else.


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

n8app155 said:


> Could they be Caucasian bees?


I don't think so. So far I have read about Caucasians is that they have extremely thick bands, even more so than Italian or Carniolans, I read from Dave Cushmans site (http://www.dave-cushman.net/bee/morphometry.html):

---------------------------------------------------------------------A. m. mellilfera-------------------------------------------A. m. ligustica--------------------A. m. carnica------------------------A. m. caucasia 
*"Tomentum Width (4th tergite)----------------narrow, less than 1/2 of tergite	broad---------------------more than 1/2 of tergite------------broad, much hair----------------Very broad, much hair"*

I am still wondering if there is variation within the Caucasian subspecies though. The bees we have here in our colonies in North Carolina that I suspect are German black bees look very similar, from what I can tell, to the picture (http://www.bulletinofinsectology.org/pdfarticles/vol71-2018-257-271fontana.pdf) of German black bees from Airole, Imperia, Italy. The Ligurian strain of Italian bees that have been imported to the US in the past may have actually had a mixture of this strain (if it is a strain, maybe its just from cross-breeding as AR1 talked about before) of thick-banded German black bee. 

Also, the few hives that I have seen that have similarities to the German black bees in Imperia, Italy are doing dry cappings, and propilize little, which is like German black, not Caucasian that are said to propilize a lot and do wet cappings. Here are videos of the colonies that I suspect have a good amount of the Italian form of German black bee:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBmCBtXSr3k (Thin banded one at 2:14 in video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4d3YhK-409I
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsorpw_98sA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p096AyxVBNk


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Tigger19687 said:


> I'm trying to figure out which mutt added the black tipped butt to my bees. I have a Buckfast mix that spun off 2 queen cells that I made new hives with. I have no idea what is around here but I would say at least 1/2 of both the spun off hives have this butt black color.
> I have a video but will try to get some pics of them. They walk a bit faster then the other bees so it has been hard to get them to stay still. I will try to get some this evening when they get a bit more settled to photograph.
> https://youtu.be/LM9LSYfNOjA


Sorry, I don't know what kind of bees they are in your video. The black shininess on the abdomen tips look like is from varroa mite hairless virus or sugar syrup drowning rather than it being natural. You are in Massachusetts, so the colder and longer winters may mean that you have only a small variety of subspecies compared to down south like here in North Carolina where I am.



Juhani Lunden said:


> Friedrich Ruttner writes in "Naturgeschiche der Honigbienen", page 58, that the DS (discoidal shift) is negative only by Amm (black bees of Northern Europe), "all other European races have positive values".


That rules out Ukrainian, Greek bees and others. Thank you for the good information Juhani Lunden. But I think that Spanish black bees may have negative on the discoidal shift like German blacks, too. The Spanish black bees were described in 1999, "A. m. iberiensis Engel, 1999". So Spanish black bees were discovered after Friedrich Ruttner wrote that, is that right? Would Spanish black bees have negative on the discoidal shift then, also like the German blacks?


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

joebeewhisperer said:


> I have your black butts open feeding today. I have asked several ppl what they are, and the answer I get on forums is feral. I assumed for the last 4 years that they were kept by a park ranger near my home, as this is the direction they fly. We also have jet black shiny bees from a tree about 3/8 mile from home. These I have some experience with, and if they interbreed with Italians, you can get some angry bees. We always called them German, but I really have no idea. They are very distinct. Dad and I hived a colony from a tree in the 80's and they were not any more aggressive than anyone else.


Maybe they are Tunisian bees? Were they shinny black like the bees in this video I took?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJwaUrGD8UU&t=35s Where did you find these bees, in the Southeastern US or Northern?


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## Juhani Lunden (Oct 3, 2013)

HaplozygousNut said:


> Would Spanish black bees have negative on the discoidal shift then, also like the German blacks?


Yes, If they are _Apis mellifera mellifera_.


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## joebeewhisperer (May 13, 2020)

Again, I don't know which bees we have been calling German. But here is a recent pic of some black butts, as well as a solid black "German". These have been native to TN for at least decades, and have managed to keep fairly separate as a strain (at least according to consistent color). The bee shown lives in a tree not far from my house.


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

joebeewhisperer said:


> Again, I don't know which bees we have been calling German. But here is a recent pic of some black butts, as well as a solid black "German". These have been native to TN for at least decades, and have managed to keep fairly separate as a strain (at least according to consistent color). The bee shown lives in a tree not far from my house.
> 
> View attachment 58007


Thank you for the image Joebeewhisperer. But I am sorry to say that they look like some kind of black bees that have just lost hairs from Varroa hairless virus or old age, the same as Tigger19687's video of his shinny bees. Not sugar syrup drowning though, because yours is from a wild colony that is not fed sugar syrup. 

If you could check the "discoidal shift" to see if those wild bees are negative then that would suggest that they are not the common Italian bee or Carniolan.

I made a video about the discoidal shift showing Dave Cushman's picture of the discoidal shift (skip to 3:09 in the video for the discoidal shift):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pC5NAIHGR_A


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## joebeewhisperer (May 13, 2020)

I don't think it's the result of a disease of any kind. They are not hairless, just have less hair on abdomen. They colony has been in the same place for at least 4 years. I have toyed with the idea of hanging a swarm trap, or coaxing the queen into an outer box to lay some stock. 

They are surviving in nature without chemicals, and by nature can get aggressive. Not quite ready to farm something I have to fight, but it's a neat thought. Here are some more pics from today.

I did notice there is a bit of yellow in them when they are full. Also noticed some hair between that last two segments.


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Genetic study of German black bees of Tomsk, Siberia, intermixed with some Carpathian: https://www.intechopen.com/books/be...erization-of-the-honeybees-in-siberia-russia- (Good pictures of comparison of negative, neutral, positive of discoidal shifts)

Burzyan bees (German black bee strain), an Ural population (Bashkir population) of German Black bees on page 4 (the abdomens are narrow, are they not?, for a German Black bee?):
https://www.wild-russia.org/pubs/pdfs/32.pdf



AR1 said:


> After all the crossbreeding of many different strains of bees imported into the US, only genome typing can tell the ancestry of a bee.
> 
> The way gene crossing works, after a few generations a golden bee could be a nearly 'pure' Caucasian or Russian. And the opposite, a black bee could be almost entirely Italian in every other trait than color. Same with wing conformation.


Hi AR1. I have asked a bee geneticist, David Tarpy, and from what I understand, the crossing of bees would cause random mixture of genes from the "recombination" of the homologous chromosome pairs during meiosis. So from what I understand, you were right about the traits of each subspecies getting mixed together when hybridizing or cross-breeding happens. Dr. Tarpy said it was "cross-over" of genes during recombination. I am sorry, I hope that you forgive me for being dismissive of what you said about cross-breeding before. I still have a feeling that something is causing the traits of a subspecies to somehow be held together, because I have seen bee colonies that have many traits of a certain subspecies instead of just a random mixture, like the videos of the suspected Italian strain of German black bees, and suspected Tunisian bees that I have posted before here.


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## joebeewhisperer (May 13, 2020)

Anything that can interbreed will eventually do so given the opportunity. 

I'm actually surprised these bees maintain even the same color. If you crack any hive in my yard, you will see about 5-6 colors/patterns. 

As far as genetics, I could grab a few and send them to be analyzed if Dr Tarpy or any other qualified person wants to take a shot. They may be native to Patagonia, I do not know. I have watched 100s of them open feed near my yard. However, the entrance to the tree is about 9-10' from the ground, so it's possible I'm just not seeing color diversity. I agree they could have any combination of genetic material and still be black.


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## AR1 (Feb 5, 2017)

HaplozygousNut said:


> Hi AR1. I have asked a bee geneticist, David Tarpy, and from what I understand, the crossing of bees would cause random mixture of genes from the "recombination" of the homologous chromosome pairs during meiosis. So from what I understand, you were right about the traits of each subspecies getting mixed together when hybridizing or cross-breeding happens. Dr. Tarpy said it was "cross-over" of genes during recombination. I am sorry, I hope that you forgive me for being dismissive of what you said about cross-breeding before. I still have a feeling that something is causing the traits of a subspecies to somehow be held together, because I have seen bee colonies that have many traits of a certain subspecies instead of just a random mixture, like the videos of the suspected Italian strain of German black bees, and suspected Tunisian bees that I have posted before here.


I certainly didn't take it badly. Genetics is tricky and bee genetics particularly so. Lots I don't know! Read up on the project to recreate the aurochs. It is interesting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tauros_Programme


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Juhani Lunden said:


> I looked at my book of Ruttner. Iberica is not a crossing, but a very old species, belonging to the group of dark bees in Europe and northern Africa.
> 
> Intermissa is the oldest (Africa)
> then formed Iberica (Spain and Portugal)
> ...





HaplozygousNut said:


> That rules out Ukrainian, Greek bees and others. Thank you for the good information Juhani Lunden. But I think that Spanish black bees may have negative on the discoidal shift like German blacks, too. The Spanish black bees were described in 1999, "A. m. iberiensis Engel, 1999". So Spanish black bees were discovered after Friedrich Ruttner wrote that, is that right? Would Spanish black bees have negative on the discoidal shift then, also like the German blacks?


Sorry, Juhani Lunden. You had already wrote early in this topic about Friedrich Ruttner writting about Spanish Black bees. And even that Ruttner knew about the A. m. intermissa hybridizing with the A. m. iberiensis in the southern part Spain. I had thought that because the Spanish black bees were described just not too long ago in 1999 by Engel that Ruttner would not have known about them in his time. I was wrong.


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

HaplozygousNut said:


> In the video (
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Here is a video of bees from somewhere in North Africa: 




In the video there are light bees along with black bees in the colony, so it may be natural for some strains of A. m. intermissa to have light coloration. Also, I asked David Tarpy about whether darkness was recessive in bees. He answered that he did not know too much about coloration in bees, but in his experience he has found light coloration often to be recessive, but not always. So it is not quite as simple as just one dominates the other. I thought maybe it could be that the first few segments are dark recessive and the few bottom segments down to the tail of the bee have light coloration as recessive. This would make sense because bees always get light coloration in order, starting from the top segments downward.

Epistasis (dominant and recessives)








Epistasis - Wikipedia







en.wikipedia.org









HaplozygousNut said:


> So far I have been getting just negatives and 0s on the discoidal shift when measuring our bees, even with lighter bees. I have not done many colonies yet. It could be that I am not measuring the discoidal shift correctly. Hopefully I will find some positives so that I will know that I am measuring correctly. I place the wing on the clear plastic of a lantern so that I have a good view with the light shinning through from underneath the wing.
> 
> Website about discoidal shift and German black bees (pictures):
> MORPHOMETRY
> ...


 Actually, I might be measuring the discoidal shift wrongly. I am using a staple, and not a full "T" shape to see whether the bees are negative or positive on the wing veins. Still I checked a couple bees from the colony in the first video (



) I posted of our suspected German black bees, and they had the discoidal shift wing veins like that of the German black bee in this photo (Why are bees black? - Quora). And if I try to favor towards positive or zero with the staple that I am measuring with, then it doesn't look quite center. The couple bees that I checked looked negative on the discoidal shift, although the wing vein was similar in shape to the zero of the pictures of wing veins on this website: A Comprehensive Characterization of the Honeybees in Siberia (Russia) | IntechOpen

I have gotten positives on the discoidal shift though in our colonies!

Honeybee video from Atlas mountains in North Africa: 



 (skip to 1:59 to see the bees. Are they wide abdomens like German black bees?)


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## johng (Nov 24, 2009)

I would be quite shocked if there were any left. With all the commercial and backyard hives around now. If there were any around I bet they have been diluted with Italians.


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## joebeewhisperer (May 13, 2020)

I posted some pics before but thought I'd drop these in the mix. These are completely black until gorged, then some golden/brown translucence show up high on the abdomen. I agree they are an oddity, and that it's unlikely that they have maintained a purity of genetic code. That said, they are fairly remote. My Dad raised this type, as did his father and his father. If the older generation knew how many times I've purchased bees, they would not approve. 

I do notice the one band (maybe two) of hair between some of the last abdominal segments (otherwise almost slick abdomen). I've heard Iberian, I've heard mite disease, .... I'm convinced they don't care. They are here in pockets, for however long their genetics hold up. 

1st video in post showing worker of the black bees we always called German. (Nov 2020)

__
http://instagr.am/p/CHQ4uQwFW71/

2nd video in post (use arrows) showing closest tree where these reside. (Sept 2020) They have lived in this tree for at least 4 years. 

__
http://instagr.am/p/CFLgGOaFKYi/


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## Cloverdale (Mar 26, 2012)

joebeewhisperer said:


> Anything that can interbreed will eventually do so given the opportunity.
> 
> I'm actually surprised these bees maintain even the same color. If you crack any hive in my yard, you will see about 5-6 colors/patterns.
> 
> As far as genetics, I could grab a few and send them to be analyzed if Dr Tarpy or any other qualified person wants to take a shot. They may be native to Patagonia, I do not know. I have watched 100s of them open feed near my yard. However, the entrance to the tree is about 9-10' from the ground, so it's possible I'm just not seeing color diversity. I agree they could have any combination of genetic material and still be black.


Why don’t you send those pics to Rusty Burlew of Honey Bee Suite, she could probably identify it for you. I know that by looking at the wings you can usually see the difference in species in the veining.









How to identify a honey bee using wing veins


Beekeepers shoud be able to recognize a honey bee when they see one, no matter how mangled or diseased it is. The marginal cell of the forewing is key.




www.honeybeesuite.com


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

Cloverdale said:


> Why don’t you send those pics ........by looking at the wings you can usually see the difference in species in the veining.


This takes more than just a pic.
The wings need to be collected and properly scanned, and the images need to be fed into specialized software.


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## Cloverdale (Mar 26, 2012)

GregV said:


> This takes more than just a pic.
> The wings need to be collected and properly scanned, and the images need to be fed into specialized software.


From looking at the images what do you think? Just curious...


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

Cloverdale said:


> From looking at the images what do you think? Just curious...


For wing analysis you start with sample like this (pic).
Then scan the sample with a good enough scaner and save the output into a file with the special format.
Then feed the file into the spec application.
The app then spits out a table with the main known bee groups represented in the sample.

A simple photo - will not do it.


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## joebeewhisperer (May 13, 2020)

Cloverdale said:


> Why don’t you send those pics to Rusty Burlew of Honey Bee Suite, she could probably identify it for you. I know that by looking at the wings you can usually see the difference in species in the veining.


Cool Thanks!


GregV said:


> For wing analysis you start with sample like this (pic).
> Then scan the sample with a good enough scaner and save the output into a file with the special format.
> Then feed the file into the spec application.
> The app then spits out a table with the main known bee groups represented in the sample.
> ...


Awesome Greg! I did not have this chart. I'll get a few wing shots to start with. I figure a sample of bees will have to go somewhere for a decent analysis. Again, I don't know what they are, but they've been here a while.


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## Cloverdale (Mar 26, 2012)

For the average beekeeper who would like to determine whether an insect is a honey bee “at a glance” the image of the wing and that particular segment that Rusty circled in the image works very well. A more serious determination calls for what Greg said.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

Cloverdale said:


> For the average beekeeper who would like to determine whether an insect is a honey bee “at a glance” the image of the wing and that particular segment that Rusty circled in the image works very well. A more serious determination calls for what Greg said.


Well, Rusty was talking of the differences between a bumble bee and a honey bee, if I recall - that one is pretty darn obvious.

But in fact, I want to try doing the honey bee wing analysis (got a pretty good scanner too).


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Here are weather map videos of Northwestern Africa right now this winter. 




__





Algeria Weather Map


Animated Algeria 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





And this is the Southeastern US for comparison. 




__





United States Weather Map


Animated United States 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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## Cloverdale (Mar 26, 2012)

GregV said:


> Well, Rusty was talking of the differences between a bumble bee and a honey bee, if I recall - that one is pretty darn obvious.
> 
> But in fact, I want to try doing the honey bee wing analysis (got a pretty good scanner too).


Actually in that particular article it wasn’t a comparison of bumbles bees to honey bees, she was showing a way to quickly asses and to determine what type of bee that has similarities in appearance to a honey bee BECAUSE of misdiagnosis of similar insects. Deb


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Cool stuff about Spanish A. mellifera mellifera or A. m. intermissa or A. m. iberiensis in the Southwest US!


Paul McCarty said:


> Sounds a little like my bees. Last winter I watched bees like these fly and gather the last of the remaining pollen when it was 34 degrees outside. Survivor is not a strong enough word for them.





Paul McCarty said:


> When I first started doing feral removals, I was afraid these bees were some kind of AHB, but after running across real AHB hybrids a few times, now I know otherwise. I have noticed those AHB hybrids are not as dark. If I pull out light bees with yellowish drones, invariably they have more AHB traits. Funny thing, those bees are usually not as mean as the dark ones. Honestly, I have some bees derived from Russians, and these dark bees act very, very similar in my eyes - the only big difference is the cluster size and the Spring build-up.
> 
> At this point I am pretty convinced I am running into a local strain of AMM or AMI (Iberica/Intermissa) of some sort. I have heard about the Mexican AMM along the border - so it seems logical they would be related.





Paul McCarty said:


> I am pretty well versed with Mrs. Magnus and her research. A lot of her research points to a portion of the bee population here being Iberian or Intermissa. Spanish Iberian bees are a variant of the AMM from Western Europe, mixed with a little African Intermissa - another black bee. The story goes that the Spanish brought them over during the conquest of the Americas. That is probably what I am seeing. Mrs Magnus has since moved on to work for Monsanto, if I remember correctly and the study is no longer being undertaken.





Paul McCarty said:


> FYI for anyone following this thread... Just spoke with Carol Sutherland, NM State Entomologist. She told me that AMM/Black Bees have, in fact, existed in New Mexico. On top of that, several beekeepers in San Juan county imported a bunch of them several years back and they got loose, swarmed, and bred with the feral bees. They pretty much spread all across the county and quite possibly further. She said the old bee inspector from that period HATED going to that county, as the bees were always difficult and unmanageable.
> 
> Interesting story nonetheless.
> 
> She is the lady I have test my bees to make sure AHB is not creeping into my queens. She sends them to OSU, I believe.


----------



## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

HaplozygousNut said:


> Yes, I think you are right! Buckfast bees alone could have brought in many different subspecies of honeybees.
> 
> Quote from Buckfast bee article from Wikipedia:
> Buckfast bee
> ...


I can't remember where I read about the Spanish Black bees and Egyptian bees breeding pure even when mating queens in hybrid areas. I have also read somewhere about how the German black bees in France being able to breed pure despite migratory beekeepers coming through the area, which you would think cause hybridization with the native bees. They said something about the time of day or year when the native bees mate could cause the native bees to mate pure with their own kind.

Also, I have seen a top-bar hive exile several queens to the empty side of the top-bar hive where the queens were not taken care of. This was after they swarmed and virgin queens hatched out. I have read about workers in a colony showing preference for virgin queens that are of their own genetics than of queens that hatch out that are less so, and help the queen that has the closest genes to themselves fight and win against the other queens. Maybe the workers recognize their own genetics by smell?

Also, I have thought that maybe drones mate with queens that are similar to their own genetics, recognizing them by smell in the drone congregation zones. Also, some drones may become more closer to purity, even from a hybrid mother, because drones only get half the genes (Haploid) of the mother, and so those purer drones could go after queens of their own kind more strongly.

I have read that it is possible that workers accompany queens during mating flights. Worker bees accompany their queen/s when swarming, which is hard for me to understand how bees do this so well. So it might be that the workers are somehow able to fight off drones that are different genetically and allow drones of their kind to mate with their colony's queen they escort. None of this I know, and I am just guessing what could be happening for bees to mate purer than would be expected in hybridized areas.

Here in this article about Yemeni bees it says that the open mated queens of A. m. yeminitica bred workers with traits of A. m. yeminitica dominating despite being in an area that had another kind of bee. This made me think that maybe the A. m. yemenitica queens were actually somehow mating pure with drones of their own kind, rather than that maternal traits are genetically dominant.








Making a bee line


How scientists bred an “Emirati Bee” engineered to withstand the hot UAE summer.




wired.me





_"
..........................What they found was that the bee best equipped to survive conditions in the Emirates was from Saudi Arabia. “It was a line of bee from the race called Apis mellifera jemenitica,” Anderson explains. “We brought in three different lines from Saudi Arabia and crossed them to get a single line. And we got a bee-breeding system going at ADAFSA with a small nucleus of breeder queens.”

One of the biggest challenges they encountered was the need for large numbers of drones, or males, to mate with the new queens. They attempted artificial insemination of the breeder queens, but couldn’t sufficiently scale the program.

So they tried letting the purebred queens “open mate” with any drone, leaving the process up to nature. Drones congregate and swarm in certain areas and the queen bees know where to seek them out. “At that time the congregating drones were mainly a mix of Saudi and also Egyptian-sourced drones,” says Anderson. “So the question was, if we let the queen mate with random drones, will her offspring turn out like her or the drone?” What the researchers discovered was that the bees’ maternal traits were dominant and the pure-bred queens produced offspring that more closely resembled Apis mellifera jemenitica, the Arabian honeybee. Just the outcome the team wanted............................................................"_


-Nathaniel Long


----------



## joebeewhisperer (May 13, 2020)

HaplozygousNut said:


> I have also read somewhere about how the German black bees in France being able to breed pure despite migratory beekeepers coming through the area ...


I have no idea how they do it. It may just be that the few traits we recognize (color, temperament, productivity, winter cluster size, etc.) are so overly dominant in them that these traits cannot be bred out. What I do know is they are still around, still colored the same, still possessing the same traits, this after decades of being potentially exposed to standard, run-of-the-mill Italian drones.


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## Roland (Dec 14, 2008)

Faster drones is one reason I have heard.

Crazy Roland


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

Per my readings, the AMM are stronger flyers (than Ligustica/Carnica) - the stronger mechanical structure of their wing supposed to be proving that.
Attached are the worker wings; but the drone wings should be similar.


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## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

Nathaniel:

I don't know if you've been watching many of the winter BIBBA webinars recently posted on YouTube, but many of the talks touch on this question in attempting to explain how AMM has persisted on the isles in the face of relentless importation pressure. Three main theories are put forth:

1. The queens/drones fly at lower temperatures.

2. The DCA's are at higher elevations.

3. Local adaptation confers greater reproductive success to more environmentally suitable stock.

This video gives the most comprehensive treatment of the subject:


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

GregV said:


> Per my readings, the AMM are stronger flyers (than Ligustica/Carnica) - the stronger mechanical structure of their wing supposed to be proving that.
> Attached are the worker wings; but the drone wings should be similar.


GregV, I thought this might be the case for German black bees! I noticed how some of our German black bee like bees taking off upwards from a standstill very fast. But it would take other bees a moment to gain speed, and I don't think the other bees go directly upwards, but forwards when taking off.

-Nathaniel Long


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Litsinger said:


> Nathaniel:
> 
> I don't know if you've been watching many of the winter BIBBA webinars recently posted on YouTube, but many of the talks touch on this question in attempting to explain how AMM has persisted on the isles in the face of relentless importation pressure. Three main theories are put forth:
> 
> ...


Thank you for the link Litsinger! 

-Nathaniel Long


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## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

Nathaniel:

Good article in the April 2021 ABJ (attached)- thought it might be interesting to you.


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Litsinger said:


> Nathaniel:
> 
> Good article in the April 2021 ABJ (attached)- thought it might be interesting to you.


Thank you for the article Litsinger! I just saw the article it is talking about a couple weeks ago (Genetic past, present, and future of the honey bee (Apis mellifera) in the United States of America). It said that the genetic study found Yemeni bee (Apis mellifera jemenitica) and African bee (Apis mellifera scutellata) genetics in New York. I was quite excited! Yemeni bees are the smallest subspecies of honeybee (Apis mellifera), I have read. Even smaller than some kinds of Asian honeybees (Apis cerana).

Yemen and Saudi Arabia, where the Yemeni bees are from, does not have cold winters from what I searched online. Could the Yemeni bee genetics found in New York be a high altitude or mountain strain to be able to survive the winters in New York? Yemeni bees also range into Africa across the Red Sea from Yemen. Ethiopia has high mountains that seem to get much colder winters than the smaller mountains in Yemen: Yemen Weather Map

Is there a better USDA temperature zoning map for Yemen and Ethiopia that shows how cold the high altitudes get each winter than this one? Figure 4: Global plant hardiness zones as reported in Magarey et al.,...



About the African genetics found in the genetic testing in New York:
The A. m. scutellata genes found in New York could be from A. m. monticola from the mountains in 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 and German Black bee drones are said to have. Here, in this article there is a picture of a A. m. monticola drone: Monticola Picture Log


There has been African genetics found in Europe, too:
A Molecular Method for the Identification of Honey Bee Subspecies Used by Beekeepers in Russia

_*"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." *_

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.


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## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

Thanks for posting the source article, Nathaniel. Looks like they did quite a lot of research to compile the chronology.

As regards the monticola bee- whenever I hear of this subspecies, I immediately envision Brother Adam in the sedan chair directing operations as they cracked open the logs mounted in the trees looking for the next best introduction to the Buckfast bee.

It is truly remarkable to consider the genetic variability of the species.

Best of success to you this season.

Russ


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## Struttinbuck (Mar 8, 2020)

I have a hive that has about 10 percent of the workers shiny jet black. And was thinking, what would happen if you produced a laying worker from one of those workers to produce massive amounts of drones?


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Struttinbuck said:


> I have a hive that has about 10 percent of the workers shiny jet black. And was thinking, what would happen if you produced a laying worker from one of those workers to produce massive amounts of drones?


If those shiny workers are German black bees, then their drones would turn out with dark thorax hairs?


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## Struttinbuck (Mar 8, 2020)

HaplozygousNut said:


> If those shiny workers are German black bees, then their drones would turn out with dark thorax hairs?


You see that drone I have for my avitar. I will post a better closeup of that drone and tell me what you think?


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## Struttinbuck (Mar 8, 2020)

HaplozygousNut said:


> If those shiny workers are German black bees, then their drones would turn out with dark thorax hairs?


And maybe not. I just replaced a memory card and its not getting put back in for a while. 
I will just get some more pics the next day or two.


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Struttinbuck said:


> And maybe not. I just replaced a memory card and its not getting put back in for a while.
> I will just get some more pics the next day or two.


Okay, thank you. I will be eager to see your photos of dark drones, Struttinbuck. The drone looks dark haired in your avatar (Struttinbuck)  German black bees may not be so bad as their reputation is. People almost replaced them in Germany with Carniolan bees a long time ago because people thought the foreign bees were better than their native German black bees. Why Apis mellifera mellifera?


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## Struttinbuck (Mar 8, 2020)

HaplozygousNut said:


> Okay, thank you. I will be eager to see your photos of dark drones, Struttinbuck. The drone looks dark haired in your avatar (Struttinbuck)  German black bees may not be so bad as their reputation is. People almost replaced them in Germany with Carniolan bees a long time ago because people thought the foreign bees were better than their native German black bees. Why Apis mellifera mellifera?


Here are some pics of a worker. I can get better angles and stuff , but I just ran out there real quick between my boys and a little project I got cooking.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

I would not get carried away with the idea of "black bee" == A. m. mellifera.
Carnica/Carpathica/Caucasica variants/hybrids/mongrels can be just as black.
I had these.

Why all the wild guesses?
The mellifera (and related to it iberiensis) should be pretty reliably identified by morpho-analysis (unlike the other, more obscure and over-lapping lineages).


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## Struttinbuck (Mar 8, 2020)

GregV said:


> I would not get carried away with the idea of "black bee" == A. m. mellifera.
> Carnica/Carpathica/Caucasica variants/hybrids/mongrels can be just as black.
> I had these.
> 
> ...


I just always hate hearing about a species of something going extinct. So I start getting ideas about HEY!!! What if we???
LOL
Happens to me all the time. LOL


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Struttinbuck said:


> Here are some pics of a worker. I can get better angles and stuff , but I just ran out there real quick between my boys and a little project I got cooking.
> View attachment 62663
> View attachment 62664


Looks like the worker lost her hair from something, rather than it being natural... It is hard for me to tell what they look like without the rings of hair. The abdomen looks narrow to me, like Carniolan bees. But do any of your colonies have dark thorax haired drones like the one in your avatar photo? What state are you in Struttinbuck? Thank you for the photos!

Here are Spanish black bees (Apis mellifera iberica) with discoidal wing shift veining that is towards zero it looks:








Apis mellifera ibérica - Reina nueva | Facebook | By Apis mellifera ibérica | Aceptación de princesa.


583 views, 7 likes, 0 loves, 0 comments, 4 shares, Facebook Watch Videos from Apis mellifera ibérica: Aceptación de princesa.




www.facebook.com


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## Struttinbuck (Mar 8, 2020)

HaplozygousNut said:


> Looks like the worker lost her hair from something, rather than it being natural... It is hard for me to tell what they look like without the rings of hair. The abdomen looks narrow to me, like Carniolan bees. But do any of your colonies have dark thorax haired drones like the one in your avatar photo? What state are you in Struttinbuck? Thank you for the photos!
> 
> Here are Spanish black bees (Apis mellifera iberica) with discoidal wing shift veining that is towards zero it looks:
> 
> ...


As far as coloration, I have a couple hives that are 75 percent the ones from the video. And they are like generic Caucasion? Not like Jason Bragg or Sue Colby Caucasion.
I didnt notice any drones yesterday ,but will keep a good watch out. It wont be long now.
I'm in zone 6A in West Virginia. But the Queen came from a guy in Tennesee.
Winters Apiary.


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Struttinbuck said:


> As far as coloration, I have a couple hives that are 75 percent the ones from the video. And they are like generic Caucasion? Not like Jason Bragg or Sue Colby Caucasion.
> I didnt notice any drones yesterday ,but will keep a good watch out. It wont be long now.
> I'm in zone 6A in West Virginia. But the Queen came from a guy in Tennesee.
> Winters Apiary.


Caucasian bee drones have dark thorax hairs, too, like German Black bees do. Struttinbuck, was the dark drone in your avatar photo from a Caucasian queen from Winter's Apiaries? I asked Winter's Apiaries about how to identify Caucasian bees, and I was told by the dark thorax haired drones (although, some other subspecies of bees have dark thorax hairs on drones, too).


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## Struttinbuck (Mar 8, 2020)

HaplozygousNut said:


> Caucasian bee drones have dark thorax hairs, too, like German Black bees do. Struttinbuck, was the dark drone in your avatar photo from a Caucasian queen from Winter's Apiaries? I asked Winter's Apiaries about how to identify Caucasian bees, and I was told by the dark thorax haired drones (although, some other subspecies of bees have dark thorax hairs on drones, too).


Yes, I got 3 packages from him last spring. So if thats the case, I will keep an eye out on my other colonies. I have 3 Russian colonies, some Micheal Palmer ( carniolans) some maulers and a couple mutts. 
And I love to get those real closeup pics of the landing boards. And if you can believe it, the photo of the black workers are from a galaxy S7 active! 
I'm impressed with these phones now!
So are the German Black Bees shorter bodied?


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Struttinbuck, I am not sure because I haven't really measured the bee's abdomens before, but the German black bees do look more stocky from their broader abdomen, I think.

Some strains of Spanish black bees may have more ordinary looking smaller abdomens than the broad abdomen German black bees. Apis Mellifera or Iberian black bee, the native species of the area... (Spanish black bee photo from Northern Spain), Reina en plena puesta.. 

All our colonies this year have dark thorax haired drones. They don't seem to be Tunisian in looks, so that has made me think that our colonies have a larger percentage of German black than I thought. I may have been missing the Spanish black bees as just hybrids of German black bees, but are actually closer to pure. They are aggressive and do wet cappings on their honey, which matches Spanish black bees. But the majority of our colonies that I remember do wet cappings anyway.

I have looked at videos of some strains of Tunisian bees (aka Tellian bees, Punic bees), and this strain has broad abdomens like German black bees from the best I can tell:




 (skip to 2:40)

So I am not sure whether these smaller abdomen "Spanish black bees" are not a strain of Tunisian. I have videos that I took this week that I will upload of them (I don't have the camera right now).

Tunisian bee strain that does dry cappings on honey:




 (skip to 1:53 in video to see dry cappings)


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## AR1 (Feb 5, 2017)

How about a few closeup pics of your bees?


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Cape bees (Apis mellifera capensis) have thin rings of hair on their abdomens, too. Cape bees seem to propilize a lot. They look similar to Asian honeybees (Apis cerana) in the photos:








The Reliance on Propolis by the Cape Honeybee - Ujubee


By Geoff Tribe, Karin Sternberg and Jenny Cullinan An interesting pattern discerned in the natural nests of wild honeybees in pristine Coastal Fynbos and Succulent Karoo has been the lavish use of propolis to form an enclosing wall at the entrance to the nest. The vast majority of nests in...



ujubee.com





Article about Tellian honeybees by Brother Adam who made the Buckfast bee:




__





Brother ADAM – In Search of the Best Strains of Bee – Second Journey (1)


Description by Brother Adam of his study trips on the biodiversity of the honey bee Apis mellifera. North Africa, Israel, Jordan



biobees.com




In the article it says that the Tunisian bee was first named Apis mellifera unicolor var. intermissa. They thought that the Tunisian bee was a hybrid of the Malagasy bee and European bees:
_*"The indigenous honeybee of North Africa is known by a number of names. Naturalists called it Apis mellifera unicolor var. intermissa. The zoologist H. von Buttel-Reepen gave it the sub-title intermissa, for he thought it was an intermediate species between the single-coloured black bee of Madagascar and the variety lehzeni of north-west Germany and Scandinavia. Whether this supposition is correct, further research will determine. However, since 1906 this race has been known in scientific literature as intermissa."*_

In the article it also writes about the longevity of the Tunisian bees. At least one strain of Tunisian like bees that we have in our colonies here in North Carolina seem always to have healthy, vigorous workers without much aging bees going bald. I have thought maybe they had better longevity than the other kinds of bees?
_*"The fecundity of the Tellian is remarkable. But extreme fertility is of no avail unless it is coupled with a high degree of stamina, and it is in this very quality that the Tellian surpasses every other race. Moreover stamina is the source of a whole series of desirable traits, longevity, hardiness, wing-power, etc. Observations made in 1953 lead me to believe that the Tellian is the longest-lived bee. I also noted that it is active at temperatures at which no other honeybees would dare to venture forth, not even Carniolans."*_

I thought I was noticing narrow abdomen queens for our Tunisian like bee colonies!
*"The queens are more uniform in colour than those of any European race. They are jet-black, long and slender and very pointed — quite unlike the plump Italian or ponderous Carniolan queens in shape." *


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

AR1 said:


> How about a few closeup pics of your bees?


AR1:
Absolutely! My camera isn't a very good one. Do you prefer photos or videos? Videos are easier for me because I don't have to sit still to take a good photo. And it is hard to do that with large gloves on.


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

A different light and solid colored strain of Tunisian, I think:










These are more aggressive from my experience of other colonies like these. The translucent, narrow abdomen strain of tunisian like bees that we have are actually gentle.

I need to go home. I will post more videos later! Goodbye AR1.


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## joebeewhisperer (May 13, 2020)

A lot of cool information since the last time I looked at this thread! 

Side note: I'm planning to go up on Friday to my neighbor's tree where I highly suspect A.m.m. have been living for at least 4 years. Last time I was there it had gotten to 53F and they weren't flying. But this was probably Dec/Jan and the weather had been cold. The woods was still chilly and the entrance is almost due north. I'm hoping they are still there.


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## AR1 (Feb 5, 2017)

Thanks. It would be interesting to see the results of genotyping. Everything else is just guesswork. My own bees are generally dark, some with solid black abdomens, though the majority have faint stripes. The queens are solid dark brown and the drones are generally black or dark brown. Source was a swarm, so no idea of the background. It'll be fun to see what this years splits produce.


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

AR1 said:


> Thanks. It would be interesting to see the results of genotyping. Everything else is just guesswork. My own bees are generally dark, some with solid black abdomens, though the majority have faint stripes. The queens are solid dark brown and the drones are generally black or dark brown. Source was a swarm, so no idea of the background. It'll be fun to see what this years splits produce.


That is interesting that you have a lot of dark bees. That probably means Italians are not dominant in your colonies. Do you have any videos or photos of the most dark colonies that you have?


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Now I am thinking there could be a few different strains of Tunisian bees here in our colonies in North Carolina... I used to think that possibly it was hybridization that caused some of the variations in some Tunisian like colonies we had in the past.

Here are some videos of Tunisian like bee in our colonies (some of these videos I have already posted here on this topic, but I am organizing them to strain of Tunisian the best I can tell):

*First:*
Colony #1 



Colony #2 



(?) Colony #3 




*Second:*
Colony #1 Light colored bees August 2020
Colony #2 Tellian bees? North Carolina April 10th?
Colony #3 Thin banded strange bees

*Third* (Really a different strain or the same as or hybrid of First?)
These are almost as if they are slightly hybridized with German black because they could be all black, and might have slightly wide abdomen and solid colored, compared to the first translucent strain posted above. These might be what I have been thinking were Spanish black bees in this post:


HaplozygousNut said:


> Struttinbuck, I am not sure because I haven't really measured the bee's abdomens before, but the German black bees do look more stocky from their broader abdomen, I think.
> 
> Some strains of Spanish black bees may have more ordinary looking smaller abdomens than the broad abdomen German black bees. Apis Mellifera or Iberian black bee, the native species of the area... (Spanish black bee photo from Northern Spain), Reina en plena puesta..
> 
> ...


Sluggish build-up in Spring, but produce drones at the usual time as other colonies, so proportionately more drones than workers in early Spring. Propolizes a lot and are aggressive.

Colony #1 Honeybee colony August
(?) Colony #2 2020 February 24th #9
Colony #3 March 5th? 2021 bees
Colony #4 2020 February 25th Dark bees (Carniolan?) #2

Bear in mind that most of this I am uncertain of and I am doing a lot of guessing.


An interesting light colored colony that looked somewhat Tunisian. Hybridization caused light coloration?








Light colored bees August (Wet cappings, Saharan?)


April 2021:Apis mellifera sahariensis? Actually had wet cappings. I looked at the cappings of honey from the top bars, and if they were dry cappings, only ...




www.youtube.com





This video is sort of what I have been thinking were the Spanish black bees with the smaller abdomens than German black bees:








August Bee colony


Looking for Spanish black bee traits. Possibility of a thick banded strain of Spanish black bee?




www.youtube.com




And this I took recently:








April (Spanish black bees?)







www.youtube.com


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Photo I took today.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

Haplo,
Just send me an envelope of your Black bees already.
What is the hold up? 
If they are at least half-Mellifera, it will be easy to see.
Your videos are really not that helpful - just some dark bees. Many people have dark bees.


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

GregV said:


> Haplo,
> Just send me an envelope of your Black bees already.
> What is the hold up?
> If they are at least half-Mellifera, it will be easy to see.
> Your videos are really not that helpful - just some dark bees. Many people have dark bees.


Sorry, GregV. I intended to send you some dead bees of our German black bee like colonies, but I lost most of our hives last year, and so I have not been able to find a living colony. Now I think I found out that most of our colonies this year were actually Tunisian bees that did not have their abdomens' engorged. Now that the nectar is coming in stronger that the colonies have started drawing a little comb, the bees are more obviously Tunisian like. I will post some photos to compare the Tunisian like bees engorged with nectar and those without engorging in the same colony. It makes them look very different when they are fat with nectar or bee bread.

Would you be interested in analyzing for Tunisian bees? Right now most of our colonies are showing Tunisian bee traits (only 8-12 colonies left, but am multiplying now).

-Nathaniel Long


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

(photos of this colony below)

I think the two bees in the middle are the same kind, just one has it's abdomen engorged, and the other not.


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

More photos of the same colony...






















































They may even keep their wing erect more like a wasp wing when the nectar flow is coming in, so that makes them look more distinct during the nectar flow?


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

More photos of the light colored forms (due to hybridization?) of Tunisian like bees in the same colony:


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Here is a video of a line of Buckfast Saharan bees:




German black hybrids? They look similar to our Tunisian like bees from just a glance at the video. I thought Saharan bees had a more ordinary round abdomen, and Tunisian have a triangle abdomen. 

And another video of Buckfast Saharan bees:




 (skip to 5:47 and 11:07 to see the bees) These are more rounded abdomen, I think. But, they have thicker bands of hair. Are they hybridized with Italian?


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Interesting video of some thin banded bees in this buckfast colony:


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

HaplozygousNut said:


> Would you be interested in analyzing for Tunisian bees? Right now most of our colonies are showing Tunisian bee traits (only 8-12 colonies left, but am multiplying now).
> 
> -Nathaniel Long


Sorry, I have no ability to distinguish the Tunisians.
That will be no use effort.


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## joebeewhisperer (May 13, 2020)

I plan to check the black-bee tree this afternoon. We’ve hit another cool snap. It was 33F at daylight. Supposed to hit close to 60F this afternoon. If they didn’t die out in the fall (which I kinda suspect) they should be working today. Hopefully they made it.

I began seeing them in 2016 or 2017, then found them last year. I was starting to think they were invincible last fall, but couldn’t find movement on 2 warm(er) days in winter. I’ll update on their status.


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

HaplozygousNut said:


> Now I am thinking there could be a few different strains of Tunisian bees here in our colonies in North Carolina... I used to think that possibly it was hybridization that caused some of the variations in some Tunisian like colonies we had in the past.
> 
> Here are some videos of Tunisian like bee in our colonies (some of these videos I have already posted here on this topic, but I am organizing them to strain of Tunisian the best I can tell):
> 
> ...


The "*Third" *strain is too similar to the* "First" *strain in looks. So I was most likely wrong. It is a mystery why some colonies are sluggish in Spring build-up. It seems as if it is related to these Tunisian like colonies though. Also, it is only the two or more story colonies that have had this problem of breeding only drones in the Spring, and not workers. When they do this it doesn't help with Varroa. Replacing the queen fixes the problem I have noticed.
"Sluggish build-up in Spring, but produce drones at the usual time as other colonies, so proportionately more drones than workers in early Spring. Propolizes a lot and are aggressive."

It would be great if someone could do genetic testing on our bees. If Saharan or Tunisian bees are already found common in our colonies, they might even find some other kinds of strange, hot climate bees, like Persian (Apis mellifera meda) or Greek bees (Apis mellifera cecropia).

Maybe the "A" lineage mitochondria could be found in our colonies if drones contribute occasionally their mtDNA through mitochondria mixing DNA within the queen and then being passed on to the eggs? And if some reason the mitochondria of a subspecies has a preference for it's subspecies of bee?

Mitochondria hybridizing in honeybees in Siberia:








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


----------



## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Is it possible there is any German black in the Russian honeybee imports to the US?

Photo of Russian bees. A few look a little more thin banded, unless those are just old bees losing their hair?

__
https://flic.kr/p/eztu7h

Russian Ural mountain strain of German black bee (They have thicker rings of hair than some other German black bees that I have seen in photos online):








Wild-hive beekeeping is a national symbol of Bashkortostan


Wild-hive beekeeping is a national symbol of Bashkortostan




kitaplong.ru





"Morphological studies of honey bees in the northern wooded steppe zone of the Republic of Bashkortostan"


https://www.bio-conferences.org/articles/bioconf/pdf/2020/11/bioconf_fies-20_00037.pdf


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Saharan like bees here in North Carolina:



HaplozygousNut said:


> This colony we have here in North Carolina has lighter bees with thick bands:
> 
> 
> 
> ...





https://www.beesource.com/attachments/20200705_120817-jpg.57547/


A few more photos of this colony from last year:



























Less lighting in the evening did not make good photos:

























































Video of thicker banded, Saharan (likely hybrids) bees from Ouarzazate, Morocco:




 (Skip to 0:49 and 0:58 and 1:29 in video to see the bees. Dark thorax haired at 1:29 in the video, to the right? When the drone turns its angle the drone is not so dark haired.) In the comments below the YouTube video they are said to be Saharan hybrids from migratory beekeepers (Google translate the Arabic). That probably explains their thicker bands.

Video of dark Tunisian bees from Northern Africa (?). They are similar in looks to German black bees:




 (Skip to 7:29 and 8:30 in video to see the bees.)


----------



## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

More photos of the same colony...


----------



## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Another colony we had that looked similar to Saharan bees (all light colored bees, wet cappings, thin bands, dull colored hairs on thorax):


----------



## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Are Yemeni bees (Apis mellifera jemenitica) sometimes thin banded also?
Photo of Yemeni bees (wet cappings on their honey):








Yemen's honey vendors stung by war


Yemen's traditional honey farming is facing threats from the ongoing war, pesticides and drought




www.middleeasteye.net


----------



## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Litsinger said:


> Nathaniel:
> 
> Good article in the April 2021 ABJ (attached)- thought it might be interesting to you.


Russ, how did you get the ABJ articles online? I would like to link online photos of interesting bees that I see in the ABJ magazine.









Genetic past, present, and future of the honey bee (Apis mellifera) in the United States of America - Apidologie


Humans have domesticated hundreds of animal and plant species for thousands of years. Artwork, archeological finds, recorded accounts, and other primary sources can provide glimpses into the historic management practices used over the course of a given species’ domestication history. Pairing...




link.springer.com




From the article about Yemeni bees found in New York there are no sightings of the honeybee before the colonists settled America. I thought that the Spaniards had brought their native Spanish black bees to California or Florida before the British brought their German black bees, but now it seems to me as if the colonists were indeed first to bring bees to the United States.



Litsinger said:


> Nathaniel:
> 
> I have enjoyed reading this thread. You may have already had the opportunity to read this series of articles written by Dr. Everett Oertel, USDA Research Entomologist published in circular in the American Bee Journal c. 1976, but if not they are well worth the read. It is the most comprehensive and well-researched summary on the topic I have found, at least without the benefit of background genetic testing.
> 
> ...


The article you showed me before says that Spaniards brought bees to Florida, but if the Spaniards had brought them earlier than the German black bee, then the honeybee should have been found already in America when the colonists came.

Quote from page 4:
_*"*_
*Florida*



_*Barton (1802) stated that the honey bees in Florida, after having been introduced by the Spaniards, had by 1785 “Increased into innumerable swarms.” Unfortunately, he gave no details as to the source of his information. Bartram (1792), on the other hand, recorded his own experiences. He noted that he and his friends cut down a bee tree on the banks of the St. Johns River in 1765 and obtained considerable honey. In several instances he was given a drink consisting of honey water in northern Florida by plantation owners. The Indians in East Florida traded beeswax and honey to the Spaniards in Cuba and to white traders in the area for trade goods. In 1765 De Brahm, according to De Vorsey (1971) began an official land survey in East Florida. He noted that honey bees, honey and beeswax could be taken from hollow trees. Bees were frequently seen and honey obtained for his use. Contrary to the statement made by Barton (see above) Villalon (1867) stated that honey bees were brought to America by English colonists and that the Spaniards first introduced honey bees in Cuba in 1764 when they fled from Florida. I believe that if Spaniards brought bees to Florida they would have left some in Cuba."*_



Our bee colonies seem to outcast the dark queens when several queens hatch out, and keep the lightest queen in the brood chamber warm and alive to mate. Splits with one queen cell produced more dark queens than splits with several queen cells I have noticed years ago. I was confused and wasn't quite sure that I was correct. But now I have seen queens killed at the front entrance of mating hives that were dark queens and the queen inside that mated successfully was light. One hive even had 5 or so dead dark queens at the front of the hive. It is strange.


----------



## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

HaplozygousNut said:


> Russ, how did you get the ABJ articles online? I would like to link online photos of interesting bees that I see in the ABJ magazine.


Nathaniel:

I take the digital subscription of ABJ. For only $16 a year, the information contained within is well worth it.

When you subscribe, you receive a monthly link to the latest edition which allows you to read it online, download it as a PDF and search back copies (among other things).


----------



## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Litsinger said:


> Nathaniel:
> 
> I take the digital subscription of ABJ. For only $16 a year, the information contained within is well worth it.
> 
> When you subscribe, you receive a monthly link to the latest edition which allows you to read it online, download it as a PDF and search back copies (among other things).


Okay, thank you. I looked at the ABJ website and found out that the older magazines are free to look at online:





Archived Digital ABJ Issues - American Bee Journal


The American Bee Journal now provides access to past digital issues! Digital subscribers can view all digital issues by logging in. Non subscribers may view issues from a year ago to date. Example: If the current month is March 2021, you may view issues from March 2020 and earlier. View Past ABJ...




americanbeejournal.com


----------



## joebeewhisperer (May 13, 2020)

Update: The tree hive of black bees near me didn't make it this winter.


----------



## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

joebeewhisperer said:


> Update: The tree hive of black bees near me didn't make it this winter.


Sorry to read this, Joe. Surely there has to be more of this genetic strain in your flight path and maybe you can luck-into some in a swarm trap here soon.

Do the black bees around you look more AMM or Carnica-type? I do get a lot of dark bees in my colonies with narrow light-colored banding at tergites, but morphologically they are not blunt in the abdomen like the photos I see of true AMM- makes me think there likely is some dark bee influence in there but a whole lot of ligustica and carnica too.


----------



## joebeewhisperer (May 13, 2020)

Litsinger said:


> Sorry to read this, Joe. Surely there has to be more of this genetic strain in your flight path and maybe you can luck-into some in a swarm trap here soon.
> 
> Do the black bees around you look more AMM or Carnica-type? I do get a lot of dark bees in my colonies with narrow light-colored banding at tergites, but morphologically they are not blunt in the abdomen like the photos I see of true AMM- makes me think there likely is some dark bee influence in there but a whole lot of ligustica and carnica too.


There's no hair between tergites to speak of, except one vareity that consistently has hair between 2 tergites (can't remember which) near the end of the abdomen. There were several on my feeder yesterday so either: 
a. the genetics show up occasionally among Russians - I have seen a few in the hives, the slick, blunt black ones without the one ring of hairs
b. my hybridized mutts picked up some genetics from black (possibly A.m.m. drones) in the area
c. there are other trees in the neighborhood
d. something else I've overlooked

We also still have the feral bees that have one band of black high on the abdomen then shiny jet black as if you dipped their little butts in paint. No idea what they are except to say they are colored different from anything else. 

At this point it would be difficult to "course" or beeline anything close to the yard. Like everyone, my colony count is on the rise and the air has a lot of bees in it. Just happened to look down in my field toward some small pines today where I saw the 2nd swarm of the year. So I've dropped the ball somewhere. It's been too cold here to risk splits until the last few days so equalizing and checker-boarding have won the day so far.

Take care Russ


----------



## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

joebeewhisperer said:


> We also still have the feral bees that have one band of black high on the abdomen then shiny jet black as if you dipped their little butts in paint.


Joe:

Thank you for your feedback. I do apologize for the delay in reply. If I am following your description, we've had bees with this coloring in the past as well- predominantly orange colored with a solid black tailgate. However, I have not observed too much of that coloration this year.

In fact, while there is quite a lot of variation in the coloring/banding of the bees in the home yard (see the attached photos), it seems to me that the colonies here are tending toward a yellower coloring than in the past few years.

Most notable has been the drones- in past years most the drones I have seen have been consistently dark colored, and this year I have seen a range of drone coloration- the most striking being what I would consider almost a Cordovan color (attached).

The coloration and attendant genetic speculations is always an interesting topic to me, but I decided what I am most interested in is whether they can survive or not .

I do hope you have a great bee year.

Russ


----------



## joebeewhisperer (May 13, 2020)

Russ, I caught a pic of one today. This one has been into a bit of sugar-water, but you get the idea.


----------



## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

joebeewhisperer said:


> Russ, I caught a pic of one today. This one has been into a bit of sugar-water, but you get the idea.


Now that is a black bee- I've never seen one so dark and devoid of any variation in color. If I didn't know better, I would wonder if that bee is suffering from CBPV:






CBPV | WindowBee™







windowbee.com












Understanding Colony Buildup and Decline: Part 13d - The Impacts of Parasites and CO2 - Scientific Beekeeping


Understanding Colony Buildup and Decline: Part 13d The Impacts of Parasites and CO2 Randy Oliver ScientificBeekeeping.com First published in ABJ October 2016 Winter is the most stressful time for the honey bee colony, and during times of stress, some parasites find opportunity in the hive. How...




scientificbeekeeping.com


----------



## joebeewhisperer (May 13, 2020)

Litsinger said:


> Now that is a black bee- I've never seen one so dark and devoid of any variation in color. If I didn't know better, I would wonder if that bee is suffering from CBPV:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


They have some caramel in the upper abdomen once full. Someone else mentioned disease a while back as a possible cause but didn't have details. I can't say for sure, but I can say there were as many as 10 working an outdoor feeder at any given time today. I'll have to say the "Window Bee" pic looks cloudy across the thorax. These don't have that. They have quite a bit of short hair, the one in the pic has been swimming in sugar water.

Could be disease, but I've seen a lot of black bees in my day. Not as much a novelty now. I'll look into it. Thanks Russ

edit: I'm attaching another pic where the same virus is described. This looks very much like a whole colony living across the highway from my house. I've been referring to these as a separate race, but they very well may be viralized. It's not exact but very similar. They've been around for several years and forage just fine by the hundreds, but the end of the abdomen looks like you dipped them in paint. Otherwise, they look/act healthy enough. May be a disorder rather than a line. I'll try and get some more pics of these.


----------



## AR1 (Feb 5, 2017)

That's a really black bee! I get a few that dark, but mainly in the early spring and I assume they are very old winter bees. The early spring bees are darker than the mid summer bees.


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## Gino45 (Apr 6, 2012)

To me it is very difficult to tell anything about bees by their coloration. They are all nearly the same. I think that my bees now are a mixture of italian and carniolian. I see many black drones as well as some golden, but more drone are in between the 2 exrtremes. They do use propolis, but not so much as to be very difficult to inspect.
I do remember having a hive or two of large black feral bees that would run and make noise when their hives were opened. They would be hanging like a swarm from the bottom and running all over if I held the frame up to view. My bees now go about their business while being viewed.
l thought that this 'running' was a fundamental characteristic that differentiates the 'black' bees from the other European strains. Oh my blacks also made real white cappings and were not afraid to sting as I remember.
I apologize if these issues were already discussed earlier in the thread.


----------



## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

joebeewhisperer said:


> May be a disorder rather than a line.


Joe:

While I am not certain, my research on CBPV would suggest that the relative lack of hair on a honey bee in-and-of-itself would not be a proof-positive indication of CBPV, but might represent other alternatives such as bee age. A couple descriptions and symptoms of CBPV:

Chronic bee paralysis as a serious emerging threat to honey bees

_Chronic bee paralysis virus (CBPV) is an unclassified bipartite RNA virus that until recently caused a rare but severe chronic paralysis disease in honey bees, with very characteristic symptoms including abnormal trembling, flightlessness and shiny, hairless abdomens. Infected symptomatic individuals die within a week leading to mounds of dead bees outside affected colonies, which sometimes collapse or are too weakened for pollination or honey production._






Chronic bee paralysis virus - Wikipedia







en.wikipedia.org





_Infected honeybees will begin to show symptoms of the illness within five days of infection, and the infection presents in two distinct ways, with Type I infection being the more common of the two infection types.

A Type I infected bee presents with a bloated abdomen due to a fluid-filled honey sac and weak or trembling wings. Type I infected honey bees tend to crawl on the ground or cluster near the entrance of the hive, as their weakened wings lead to an inability to fly.

A Type II infected honey bee presents with complete abdominal hair loss, causing it to appear black and greasy. These bees are still able to fly 2–3 days after symptoms begin to appear, but they lose their ability to fly shortly before succumbing to the disease.

A third type of infection that is a major contributor to the spread of the virus is an infection of CBPV in which the infected bee exhibits no symptoms of the illness. The infected bee does not present with any of the classic symptoms of the disease before death, and, as a result, is able to transmit the virus beyond its own hive._

... And coming back around to the discussion about morphology suggesting genetic background, here are a couple interesting articles about utilizing thoracic hair color and tomenta hair width to assess bee subspecies, specifically focused on AMM:



http://www.snhbs.scot/scoring-hairs-and-tomenta-on-worker-honey-bees/




http://www.snhbs.scot/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Identifying-native-honey-bees.pdf


----------



## joebeewhisperer (May 13, 2020)

Thanks Russ,

After looking these over, I'm less convinced that what I have always called German bees are actually A.m.m.. But as far as the actual virus, I've seen thousands of these and even some in my own hives and have yet to see anything unusual or sickly in their behavior. It could be that I haven't been paying enough attention, and this I will rectify. But I've spent untold hours going through hives. As far as seeing any trembling bees or piles or dead bees I do not. A couple of years ago I had a hive with some deformed wing, and I see an occasional K-wing (or at least I think it's a K-wing) but this is usually on a drone and may just be a case of not having them folded up properly. 

I know this time of year they outproduce most of their pestilence so it's easy to overlook things. But I'll be keeping a closer eye. Thanks again!


----------



## BadBeeKeeper (Jan 24, 2015)

Litsinger said:


> Now that is a black bee- I've never seen one so dark and devoid of any variation in color. *If I didn't know better, I would wonder if that bee is suffering from CBPV:*


On seeing it, that was my first thought too.


----------



## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

joebeewhisperer said:


> Russ, I caught a pic of one today. This one has been into a bit of sugar-water, but you get the idea.
> View attachment 63246


This is one scary looking bee. Wow.

But probably just a wet, old bee to think of it.


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

HaplozygousNut said:


> Struttinbuck, I am not sure because I haven't really measured the bee's abdomens before, but the German black bees do look more stocky from their broader abdomen, I think.
> 
> Some strains of Spanish black bees may have more ordinary looking smaller abdomens than the broad abdomen German black bees. Apis Mellifera or Iberian black bee, the native species of the area... (Spanish black bee photo from Northern Spain), Reina en plena puesta..
> 
> ...


Oops. The video is of Saharan bees from Algeria, not Tunisian bees. I was told by the beekeeper who took the video:




 (skip to 2:40)


----------



## Justi (Apr 9, 2021)

Eduardo Gomes said:


> A.m.iberiensis is a natural hybrid M and A lineage. A.m.mellifera (black bee) is M lineage. Photos of my a.m.iberisensis:
> View attachment 52117
> View attachment 52119
> View attachment 52121
> View attachment 52123


You wouldn't have any queens you would sell


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

Justi said:


> You wouldn't have any queens you would sell


OK Justi,
Here is youtube channel from Manitoba, Canada.
This lady claims to be running the Black bees.
Contact her and find out where and how you can get the Black bees



https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCL3H9zEV5LN2d5P-xYvWCCw


----------



## Gino45 (Apr 6, 2012)

GregV said:


> OK Justi,
> Here is youtube channel from Manitoba, Canada.
> This lady claims to be running the Black bees.
> Contact her and find out where and how you can get the Black bees
> ...


I clicked on the link. It looks like greek to me!


----------



## Justi (Apr 9, 2021)

Gino45 said:


> I clicked on the link. It looks like greek to me!


Me 2 I checked a d the us has stopped imports from Canada


----------



## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

Gino45 said:


> I clicked on the link. It looks like greek to me!


The lady speaks Russian.
Canada is a land of immigrants too - just a reminder.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

Justi said:


> Me 2 I checked a d the us has stopped imports from Canada


What I am saying is - IF you really, badly want the Black bees (so to ask about the across multiple-posts) - well, contact this person and ask where can you get then.
Apparently she got them somewhere in Canada, because she wanted them.

How you will get some queens across the border - I am not asking or suggesting (not my problem).


----------



## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

HaplozygousNut said:


> --------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Our bee colonies seem to outcast the dark queens when several queens hatch out, and keep the lightest queen in the brood chamber warm and alive to mate. Splits with one queen cell produced more dark queens than splits with several queen cells I have noticed years ago. I was confused and wasn't quite sure that I was correct. But now I have seen queens killed at the front entrance of mating hives that were dark queens and the queen inside that mated successfully was light. One hive even had 5 or so dead dark queens at the front of the hive. It is strange.
> 
> View attachment 63084


This might explain why our Tunisian like bees have light colored forms mixed in a lot of our colonies. Could this selecting for light colored queens be a way to adapt to climate change? Such as an ice age that causes the foraging season to shift to the more warm Spring or Summer time versus cold season foraging during the warm spells in Winter? Dark coloration might be good for cold Winter time nectar flows to absorb heat from sunlight, and light bees for warm season nectar flows.

Western Europe had a little ice age a few hundred years ago:








Little Ice Age - Wikipedia







en.wikipedia.org


----------



## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Justi said:


> Me 2 I checked a d the us has stopped imports from Canada


You can import bee sperm here in the United States without a permit from England, France, Canada and a few other countries: Genetic past, present, and future of the honey bee (Apis mellifera) in the United States of America
Quote:
*"Currently, the USA allows live honey bee importations from New Zealand and Canada, and germplasm importations from Australia, Bermuda, Canada, France, Great Britain, New Zealand, and Sweden (USDA n.d.). Germplasm from other sources can be used with USDA permission."*



Litsinger said:


> -----------------------------------------------------
> ... And coming back around to the discussion about morphology suggesting genetic background, here are a couple interesting articles about utilizing thoracic hair color and tomenta hair width to assess bee subspecies, specifically focused on AMM:
> 
> 
> ...


Nice! I will be looking for these German black bee traits.


----------



## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

HaplozygousNut said:


> Nice! I will be looking for these German black bee traits.


Glad it is of some help to you, Nathaniel. Given that you are in North Carolina, have you had the opportunity to connect with Carl Chesick with the Center for Honeybee Research?

I wonder if he might be of some help to you in researching the genetic background of your local feral stock.


----------



## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Litsinger said:


> Glad it is of some help to you, Nathaniel. Given that you are in North Carolina, have you had the opportunity to connect with Carl Chesick with the Center for Honeybee Research?
> 
> I wonder if he might be of some help to you in researching the genetic background of your local feral stock.


No, I didn't know about him. I will try to send Carl Chesick a message with videos of our strange looking bees. I wrote to the bee geneticist, David Tarpy, about our bees, and showed him videos, but I had a hard time trying to convince him that our bees were from unusual subspecies. He kept saying that it would be impossible for honeybees to be identified by looks because of the mixing of genes from recombination. Which is a good point. But I keep seeing consistent combination of traits of, for example our Tunisian like bees, in a lot of our colonies. If it was true about the recombination from hybridization causing a random mixing of traits in a population of bees, then I shouldn't be seeing such consistency, unless my eyes are fooling me.


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## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

HaplozygousNut said:


> Which is a good point.


Well to be sure, genetic testing would be the only way to know with any degree of certainty.

Does Dr. Tarpy's lab offer the ability to test the genetic make-up of your colonies? I understand they are now testing for Africanized genetics?


----------



## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Litsinger said:


> Well to be sure, genetic testing would be the only way to know with any degree of certainty.
> 
> Does Dr. Tarpy's lab offer the ability to test the genetic make-up of your colonies? I understand they are now testing for Africanized genetics?


I am not sure. He did say that right now the genetic testing methods are not very good, and that the SNPs would be a better way for genetic testing. 

That is interesting that they are doing testing for African genetics. African bees naturally range into areas that get mild winters in South Africa. African genetics have been found in New York and Europe.


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

HaplozygousNut said:


> This might be related to this topic about Ligurian bees. The German black bee does range into Italy a little, and a lot of the German black bees there in Italy may have cross bred with the Italian bees.


Kangaroo Island in Australia is said to have pure "Ligurian bees". The Ligurian bees from northwest Italy are said to be a better strain of Italian bee than the lighter Italian strains. But I think the "Ligurian bees" were actually hybrids of German black and Italian bees. 

At the bottom of this website there is a photo of Ligurian bees from Kangaroo Island. The discoidal shift is around 0 or neutral (photos of discoidal shift on wing veins. A Comprehensive Characterization of the Honeybees in Siberia (Russia)) from what I see in the photo. Island Beehive | Kangaroo Island Organic Ligurian Bee Honey

And here is a photo of German black bee like bees from Kangaroo Island:




__





Google Image Result for https://www.island-beehive.com.au/sites/beehive/media/banners/adobestock_279813691.jpg






www.google.com


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

We might have Cape bees (Apis mellifera capensis) here in North Carolina, too, that look similar to German black bees:




__





Facebook







www.facebook.com












Cape Honeybee (Apis mellifera capensis)


Here are some pictures of the beautiful Cape bee. They look somewhat like Apis cerana. Some of them seem to have a thick dark band at the bottom of their 2nd dorsal abdomen segment: http://ujubee.com/?p=627 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_honey_bee...




www.beesource.com


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

I think all you have in North Carolina is mutts, Haplo.
Seriously.
Does not matter what they look like.

Unsure why you keep looking for something that is not there.
The Cape bees are where they belong - in South Africa.
Consider - it is hardly possible to find pure native Black bees even in the Bashkortostan now days (one of the primal, original locations of the Black bees).

Looking for some pure-ish bees in the US - I dunno if this is a productive project and what are the goals would be.
You want pure bees - you go places where they come from and, if lucky, you might find them there.

USA is a country of mutts. A melting pot.


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Here are genetically tested German black bees from a Valley in Spain or France?


https://thebeephotographer.photoshelter.com/gallery-image/Beekeepers-at-work/G00001B_betYlHuc/I0000DmRW.9.gKL8



They look rather similar to our Tunisian like bees with the translucent color, so I am uncertain what our Tunisian like bees are. Because the United States is a zone of hybridization, it is hard, if not impossible, to identify what subspecies are in the mix. Even different strains within a subspecies can cause problems for me in identifying them, like the Saharan bees videos I see online from different Oasis.


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

I looked up "native honeybee" in Persian (


زنبور عسل بومی - Google Search


)
, using the Google Translate, and I found shiny black bees that looked similar to German black or our Tunisian like bees.


https://chechilas.com/jobs/3500/products/5fb0d27561aea.jpeg



I don't know what mixture our Tunisian like bees are now. There may be more than one subspecies that I have been calling "Tunisian like bees".

Light colored, thin banded Persian bees (?):


Redirect Notice


----------



## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Apis mellifera yementica from Saudi Arabia photo?








5 برامج لتطوير صناعة وإنتاج عسل النحل في السعودية


شملت البرامج، تحسين وتطوير سلالة نحل العسل المحلي وحمايتها والمحافظة عليها.




www.zawya.com













السعودية.. ضبط مستودع للعسل المغشوش قبل تسويقه عبر الإنترنت


ضبطت الفرق الرقابية في أمانة منطقة عسير بالسعودية، أحد المحلات في سوق الثلاثاء بمدينة أبها، والذي حوله عدد من العمالة الوافدة إلى مستودع للعسل.




arabic.rt.com




From Asir area in Saudi Arabia. 








Asir Mountains - Wikipedia







en.wikipedia.org





Looks like our Tunisian like bees.


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Saharan or Tunisian bees? 
https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PNbOOkPZhHU/XbBc7GiJ5KI/AAAAAAAAAHQ/pV7mTfJKgT0cFWGZ7fHFO4zSdZ8W7eYlQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/_copie-0_reine+jaune.jpg (photo from here: افراد مملكة النحل، الشغالات، ملكة النحل، ذكر النحل، Queen Bee ،Male Bee، bee colony)



تربية النحل الطبيعية في مصر - Google Search


From here?:








دورة حياة النحل، Life cycle of bees، النحلات الشغالات، ملكة النحل، ذكر النحل، the egg، larvae، pupa، adult


دورة حياة النحل- Life cycle of bees إن النحل يمر بمراحل تطور كاملة سواء كان نحلة شغالة، ملكة، أو ذكر وهي ملخصة في أربعة أط...




www.beekeeping-algeria.com


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

German black bee looking bees from Michael Bush's photo on his website:
http://www.bushfarms.com/images/BlackBees.jpg (Surprising how uniform they look)
http://www.bushfarms.com/images/WorkerWing.jpg (Discoidal shift wing veining like the zero shape)
A Comprehensive Characterization of the Honeybees in Siberia (Russia) (Discoidal shift wing veining photo to compare)

Our German black bee like colony from last year (I had two dead bees in a container).














The German black bees here in the Eastern US look like thicker banded, which makes them similar to your common Carniolan bee.


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## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

Nathaniel:

There was recently a post in the Kentucky 'Beelines' publication about Dr. Tarpy's Honey Bee and Queen Disease Clinic and I noted they are now doing morphometric and genotypic analyses. As a North Carolina resident, I wonder if you might be able to get a discount?









Queen and Disease Clinic | NCSU Apiculture Lab







www.ncsuapiculture.net


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

HaplozygousNut said:


> German black bee looking bees from Michael Bush's photo on his website:
> http://www.bushfarms.com/images/BlackBees.jpg (Surprising how uniform they look)
> http://www.bushfarms.com/images/WorkerWing.jpg (Discoidal shift wing veining like the zero shape)
> A Comprehensive Characterization of the Honeybees in Siberia (Russia) (Discoidal shift wing veining photo to compare)
> ........


You can not really pickup a dead bee, look at it via a microscope and make a conclusion of "zero discoidal shift".
First - at least use the tools designed by experienced and smart people and that have been tested by hundreds and thousands of users.
Second - at least have a meaningful sample that represents a cross-section of a colony (given most any colony is not homogeneous in its make up).
I already suggested a proper way of doing it.
Download the tool (it is free) and do the proper sampling and then post the real deal.


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

GregV said:


> You can not really pickup a dead bee, look at it via a microscope and make a conclusion of "zero discoidal shift".
> First - at least use the tools designed by experienced and smart people and that have been tested by hundreds and thousands of users.
> Second - at least have a meaningful sample that represents a cross-section of a colony (given most any colony is not homogeneous in its make up).
> I already suggested a proper way of doing it.
> Download the tool (it is free) and do the proper sampling and then post the real deal.


These bees were the only ones that were like the "zero" shape in the discoidal shift that I have seen when I have looked at wing veining from our different colonies. It is rare, and positive discoidal shift like shape is very common in our bees. I can pick these "zero" discoidal shift bees out from all other dead bees in the same container because the discoidal shift shape is so obviously different. As to whether they are truly "zero" I am not sure, they come up as negative when I use a stapler to measure...

So, I am just going by the ball park or eyeing the discoidal shift, and I can tell a difference. Though I may not be perfectly accurate as say the program for wing vein identification you are using.


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Litsinger said:


> Nathaniel:
> 
> There was recently a post in the Kentucky 'Beelines' publication about Dr. Tarpy's Honey Bee and Queen Disease Clinic and I noted they are now doing morphometric and genotypic analyses. As a North Carolina resident, I wonder if you might be able to get a discount?
> 
> ...


Thank you Litsinger for letting me know about this. I am not sure if I want to spend any money to analyze bees.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

HaplozygousNut said:


> I can pick these "zero" discoidal shift bees out from all other dead bees in the same container because the discoidal shift shape is so obviously different.


Here is a riddle for you then. 
Attached are samples of Carni/Italian mix (sold as Carnis) and the Russians (as sold).
Which is which?


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

GregV said:


> Here is a riddle for you then.
> Attached are samples of Carni/Italian mix (sold as Carnis) and the Russians (as sold).
> Which is which?


Those look very similar, on the positive side of the discoidal shift and a few possibly close to "zero", which shouldn't be with Italian or Carnica (should be positive). So I am not able to see any difference between the wings in each photograph. And there is variation in the discoidal shift shape within each photograph, from the best I can tell. The German black bees are easier for me, because they have the "zero" and negative on discoidal shift. I don't know of another subspecies that has the negative on discoidal shift.

Are you using something other than the discoidal shift to distinguish the "Russian" stock from the Carni/Italian mixes? 

Have you found similarity and consistency in the wing veining from commercial American "Italian" or Carnica stocks with true Carnica or Italian bees? 

I am curious how pure the commercial Italian bees are here in the US. It is surprising if beekeepers are able to breed pure Italian bees when there are other subspecies in the US that could cause hybridization. Unless Italian bees have certain traits that make them dominate in commercial beekeeping, such as gentleness and constant brood production, and maintaining high population throughout the year.


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## AR1 (Feb 5, 2017)

Not much in the way of pure strains of bees in the US, not for a long time since we stopped improtation of bees.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

AR1 said:


> Not much in the way of pure strains of bees in the US, not for a long time since we stopped improtation of bees.


Well, Haplo keeps talking of "Tunisian bees" and such.
Where does one find these exotic varieties even in remote purity in North America?




> This might explain why *our Tunisian like bees *have light colored forms mixed in a lot of our colonies.


Surely, I can look at the commercial almond bees I just recently caught and I too can see "Tunisian bees" in them if I look until watering eyes. Anyway, these are all illusions.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

HaplozygousNut said:


> Those look very similar,


OK, the red dots - those are the "Russians".
The blue dots are the "Carnis".
They were labeled that - nothing more.

So, this is a demonstration how *most *bees in the US are indistinguishable and random mutts where the talks of any remote purity are pointless (as far as the very historic, original subspecies are concerned).

We are living in a melting pot as we speak.

That's what I spent my last winter doing - looking for the distinguishable exterior markers (the wings, technically).
I found some interesting cases too - very different from the general crowd, but one should not try to keep looking back for some "purity". There is not much to be found.
We are well past that point here.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

HaplozygousNut said:


> Are you using something other than the discoidal shift to distinguish the "Russian" stock from the Carni/Italian mixes?


I already stated few times - the morpho-tools use the combination of several markers.

In the ones I use - cubital index, discoidal shift, and hentel index are used in combination so to derive a statistical probability of a predominant sub-species for a given sample.

Just looking at few isolated dead bees is meaningless.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

GregV said:


> So, this is a demonstration how *most *bees in the US are indistinguishable and random mutts


I disagree on a phenotype scale 
if it looks like and Italian and acts like and Italian and meets the other breed standards for Italian then its an "Italian" regardless of the mouther line or pedigree.

such an Italian it readily distinguishable from a carny or a AMM or AHB, and they are not random mutts as they are being selected and held to a breed standard of one sort or another

this is how "most" bees are (commercial bees) sure there are a lot of random un controlled crosses form un selected stocks in hobiest backyards, but this is the miniory


since you use the term mutts its important to note DNA cant tell you if a dog is purebred



> *AKC DNA Profiles cannot determine the breed of a dog or if a dog is purebred*.







__





DNA And The AKC – American Kennel Club







www.akc.org






> *Can you confirm that my dog is pure bred?*
> No. The DNA Breed Identification test is designed for the sole purpose of identifying breeds found in the genetic composition of mixed breed dogs. If only 1 breed is detected, it could mean that a parent was a mixed breed but your dog only inherited this one particular breed. Technically this dog is not a purebred.







__





DNA My Dog: Canine DNA test Frequently Asked questions


Learn which breeds we test for, how to DNA test your dog, plus other Canine DNA test questions.




dnamydog.com


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

msl said:


> since you use the term mutts its important to note DNA cant tell you if a dog is purebred


IF this is a case, how exactly do they certify the "pure Russian bees"?
It must be impossible too to identify a certain expected genetic "fingerprint" that corresponds to a certain expected phenotype.


Somehow they do


> tested by the USDA-ARS Honey Bee Genetics and Physiology Lab in Baton Rouge, LA *for genetic purity.*











Selection & Certification


Our selection criteria place a weighted emphasis on varroa mite resistance. Russian bees exhibit multiple mechanisms of resistance to varroa mites. Rather than selecting for a single trait our...



www.russianbreeder.org




.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

msl said:


> I disagree on a phenotype scale
> if it looks like and Italian and acts like and Italian and meets the other breed standards for Italian then its an "Italian" regardless of the mouther line or pedigree.


It is about time to just introduce the "USA Pollinator" bee label.
A good commercial catch-all label and more honest than some theoretical Italian which we don't even know what it is.
I have never been to the Apennines to see them for real.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

(PDF) Genetic Stock Identification of Russian Honey Bees


PDF | A genetic stock certification assay was developed to distinguish Russian honey bees from other European (Apis mellifera L.) stocks that are... | Find, read and cite all the research you need on ResearchGate




www.researchgate.net





in this case they are following " families" , same set up to ID salmon form different water sheds, all the same "breed" of samon



GregV said:


> A good commercial catch-all label and more honest than some theoretical Italian which we don't even know what it is.


it dosent matter "what" it is if it looks like one race and acts like one race then calling it that race is an accurate description of the breed traits one expects.. a carny type bee vs a Italia type bee 

ie is a black "wolf" still a "wolf" even thow it got the black color form dostimtic dogs


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

Well then, let me paraphrase you:

........if it looks like and Tunisian and acts like and Tunisian and meets the other breed standards for Tunisian then its an "Tunisian " regardless of the mouther line or pedigree........

We do have Tunisian bees in the US because, surely, some bees WILL fit every descriptor of the Tunisian bee - just look hard enough and you will find it.
No more arguments.
Sold.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

if some one was starting with Tunisian and selecting for Tunisian, then sure.

the mother line matters not, so there is no reason to get hung up on it (one reasion I don't "get" the RHBBA program) after 5 generations it only has 3.125% of the original mouther line, after 10 its 0.097% ie Ca Park Italians coming back as carnica in Seeley 2015 

in the end it dosen't matter if you call them Italians or California yellows, its the same bee filling the same nitch


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## Gino45 (Apr 6, 2012)

msl said:


> in the end it dosen't matter if you call them Italians or California yellows, its the same bee filling the same nitch


The yellow queens in the USA have been called Italians for as long as I've been around. That is based purely on their appearance and behavioral characteristics...that is pretty gentle while raising lots of brood as compared with the darker races. Also, light on propolis.
My current 'italians' actually do use a fair amount of propolis, fwiw, but I think there is some Carniolan in the line.
I am amused by those trying to identify bees by the political lines drawn by humans. Haven't bees been moved around forever? And aren't the bees quite capable of that movement themselves?
I once saw a large black with white striped bee caught inside of a resaturant window in Istanbul. I wondered if it was a Caucasian, a Carniolan, or perhaps a Russian. I assumed from the white stripes that it wasn't a 'black' bee, but I don't know.
Doesn't all that really matters is the viability and behavioral characteristics of the bees which we actually do have?


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

All I am trying to convey is that in the USA we are in the middle of the new honey bee population forming.
For example, something is probably is in progress in the middle of the Appalachian mountains as we speak.
Pretty soon it will be identifiable and similar to the Primorsky bees of Russia (but this case will be endemic to the USA).

So it is much more useful to look forward and identify such pockets of new distinct populations forming as we speak and see how useful these bees could be.

No need to look for the "Tunisian" bees in the US.
Need to be looking for the "Appalachian" bees, instead.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

GregV said:


> All I am trying to convey is that in the USA we are in the middle of the new honey bee population forming.


arguably that's every were... either do to isolation, or do to lack of... thats the nature of bees 


> Clus-
> ter analysis revealed the presence of non-A. m.
> ligustica alleles in the northern Italian groups.
> Particularly in the North-east group, Carnica-
> ...





> The population of Sardinia may be symp-
> tomatic. In spite of the insular situation, both
> the Fisher and Fst methods returned non-
> signiﬁcant diﬀerences with the other A. m.
> ...











(PDF) Genetic characterization of Italian honeybees, Apis mellifera ligustica, based on microsatellite DNA polymorphisms


PDF | The genetic variability of Apis mellifera ligustica was screened throughout the Italian peninsula and Sardinia with eight polymorphic... | Find, read and cite all the research you need on ResearchGate




www.researchgate.net


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

msl said:


> I disagree on a phenotype scale
> if it looks like and Italian and acts like and Italian and meets the other breed standards for Italian then its an "Italian" regardless of the mouther line or pedigree.
> 
> such an Italian it readily distinguishable from a carny or a AMM or AHB, and they are not random mutts as they are being selected and held to a breed standard of one sort or another
> ...


Just by coincidence I was recently thinking about DNA testing being useless in dog breeds because they are mostly from the same line and subspecies (a southern wolf, closely related to Himalayan wolves)! The Greenland dog though I read has some northern wolf blood (northern wolves howl instead of bark). There was another line of dog that went extinct before.

German black bee coming back in Germany? Broad abdomens like German black bees. (Skip to 3:48 in video to see the bees)





The banner photo for this forum looks like almost pure German black bees (uniformly black and broad abdomens). Does anyone know whose photo that is?


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

GregV said:


> All I am trying to convey is that in the USA we are in the middle of the new honey bee population forming.
> For example, something is probably is in progress in the middle of the Appalachian mountains as we speak.
> Pretty soon it will be identifiable and similar to the Primorsky bees of Russia (but this case will be endemic to the USA).
> 
> ...


I think that there could be several different subspecies competing against each other in America where it is a hybridization area by somehow breeding to their own kind in mating flights or inside the hive (selecting for their own genetically related queens to hatch). So that there are multiple strains of honeybees in one habitat/climate area going through adaptation or a little evolution independent from each other. 

But if the bees do not have the ability to maintain purity of their subspecies in America where it is a melting pot of subspecies, then isolation is probably important for the progress of adaptation of micro-evolution. If commercial Italian queens from another climate keep getting imported and mix in with the adapting local bees, then the local bees may be slowed down in their adaptation race. First they mix to become a adaptive mixture of subspecies, then gradually become their own subspecies?


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

I found a colony that has close to "zero" on the discoidal wing veining shape. It is a thick banded colony of darker bees. I was hoping they had Caucasian genetics in them because they were so thick banded, but after looking at them more, they have that German black bee look or coloration to them, despite the thick bands. Caucasians are zero on discoidal shift, but German black bee hybridization could cause the zero discoidal shift, too.








The colony is not as obviously broad abdomen as these other two colonies from last year. I didn't get to check the wing veining on those two more pure looking German black bee colonies because they were at a more far away apiary that I didn't check on as often:









And from genetic testing done so far, the German black bee seems much more common than Caucasian in America:








Genetic past, present, and future of the honey bee (Apis mellifera) in the United States of America - Apidologie


Humans have domesticated hundreds of animal and plant species for thousands of years. Artwork, archeological finds, recorded accounts, and other primary sources can provide glimpses into the historic management practices used over the course of a given species’ domestication history. Pairing...




link.springer.com


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

HaplozygousNut said:


> -------------------------------
> 
> The banner photo for this forum looks like almost pure German black bees (uniformly black and broad abdomens). Does anyone know whose photo that is?


I am not so confidant now about the banner photo being German black bees. I saw some A. m. macedonica videos that show wider abdomens, too.

Though, I think I see a greenish hue to the thoracic hairs of the dark colored workers in the banner photo. I noticed that greenish hair in our German black like bees. The green hue shows up better in photos at a side ways angle of the workers.

These look like German black bees, with the wide abdomens and greenish hue to the thoracic hair, I think.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

HaplozygousNut said:


> These look like German black bees, with the wide abdomens and greenish hue to the thoracic hair, I think.


Carnica/Carpathica or thereabout.
With the proper German bees you don't really stick your camery into the entrance and they ignore you. They will at least check you out and maybe more to follow.


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## AR1 (Feb 5, 2017)

Bees w


HaplozygousNut said:


> I think that there could be several different subspecies competing against each other in America where it is a hybridization area by somehow breeding to their own kind in mating flights or inside the hive (selecting for their own genetically related queens to hatch). So that there are multiple strains of honeybees in one habitat/climate area going through adaptation or a little evolution independent from each other.
> 
> But if the bees do not have the ability to maintain purity of their subspecies in America where it is a melting pot of subspecies, then isolation is probably important for the progress of adaptation of micro-evolution. If commercial Italian queens from another climate keep getting imported and mix in with the adapting local bees, then the local bees may be slowed down in their adaptation race. First they mix to become a adaptive mixture of subspecies, then gradually become their own subspecies?


Bees were also transported around the Mediterranean in ancient times, so no pure races since way back when.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

HaplozygousNut said:


> First they mix to become a adaptive mixture of subspecies, then gradually become their own subspecies?


I don't know.
I am a very much amateur who knows just enough to be dangerous, and no more.

Some things are just pretty much obvious IMO and have very good practical cases to look at (and theorize from there) - evolution of the Primorsky bee is very much is such case and needs to be looked at as model of what is going on in the USA now. 
If not for the massive migratory beekeeping and cross-country sales, we'd have certain populations in the USA by now similar to the Primorsky bee.
Maybe we already do.

But before you talk subspecies, etc - you must talk *the population.*
Sufficiently unique and sufficiently isolated population is the foundation of anything else - way before species/subspecies talks.
Population is the cornerstone of everything.


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

HaplozygousNut said:


> I found a colony that has close to "zero" on the discoidal wing veining shape. It is a thick banded colony of darker bees. I was hoping they had Caucasian genetics in them because they were so thick banded, but after looking at them more, they have that German black bee look or coloration to them, despite the thick bands. Caucasians are zero on discoidal shift, but German black bee hybridization could cause the zero discoidal shift, too.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I got photos of the wings of the 5 bees that I killed to look at the discoidal shift of the dark thick banded colony. The last photo is the same wing as in the first video posted. I picked out the thicker banded dark workers at the entrance of the hive during the night in hope of finding Caucasian bees, but their abdomens are a bit wider than Caucasian (http://entnemdept.ufl.edu/media/ent...y-2015,-Stocks-of-Bees-in-the-US,-low-res.pdf On bottom of page 3 there is a photo of more narrow abdomen Caucasian bees to compare to. I saw zero discoidal shift on the Caucasian bee photo when I magnified it, and they are from the Caucasian bees native range.)


Here are more videos of the same colony with the close to zero discoidal shift:




 (At 0:28 in the video there is what looks like a newly hatched drone with dark thoracic hairs)







These look similar to German black bees with the wide abdomens to me. I could be misidentifying a strain of wide abdomen Carnica as German black bees.





Natural Honey, Bee produce wax and create honey


Bees produce wax and build honeycombs from it.



depositphotos.com


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Here are wings of five Tunisian like bees that I killed to look at the discoidal shift. This is a video of the colony (



). They may not look very narrow in abdomen in the video, but during the nectar flow they should expand their abdomens and look more narrow abdomen. The Tunisian like bees come up positive on the discoidal shift whenever I check a Tunisian like bee colony:

(Now that I look at them, they look close to zero discoidal shift, too... In person they didn't look as close to zero as the dark thick banded colony I posted photos above.


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

AR1 said:


> Bees were also transported around the Mediterranean in ancient times, so no pure races since way back when.


Yes, but still it is possible that a lot of the native populations could have close to purity from the selective pressure from the natural environment favoring the native subspecies' genetics. MSL did post before that the Italian bees from Italy had a mixture of Carnica genetics, though.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

HaplozygousNut said:


> Here are wings of five Tunisian like bees that I killed to look at the discoidal shift. This is a video of the colony (
> 
> 
> 
> ...


OK, I looked at your wings.
I don't know where you get your "Tunisian" bee, the "Tunisian" sample looks more Carni-like vs. your "Caucasian" sample.
This is purely visual check, but yes - strong Carni-type is should be visually distinct from strong Caucasian-type.

Unless you have gone to Tunisia and caught some swarms there and brought them over, how can you even talk of the "Tunisian" bees. Pretty much any bee caught in the US today is probably related to Carni and/or Italian in some degree, but not to Tunisian bee.


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

HaplozygousNut said:


> ---------------------------------------------------
> Though, I think I see a greenish hue to the thoracic hairs of the dark colored workers in the banner photo. I noticed that greenish hair in our German black like bees. The green hue shows up better in photos at a side ways angle of the workers.
> 
> These look like German black bees, with the wide abdomens and greenish hue to the thoracic hair, I think.


Here are photos of a colony that I thought was German black/Tunisian hybrids. Some of the bees have the green hue on the thoracic hairs. 
Here is a video which I believe is the same colony (the more narrow abdomen workers should be more of the common Tunisian like bees.):





Edit:
More clearly green hue on the thoracic hairs of this colony from last year:


HaplozygousNut said:


> Here in this article there is a photo of German black bees from Airole, Imperia, Italy. The German black bees there in Italy are thicker banded. There is even a photo of A. m. sicula that are very thin banded on the same page:
> http://www.bulletinofinsectology.org/pdfarticles/vol71-2018-257-271fontana.pdf
> 
> More videos of the suspected German black bee colony:
> ...


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

GregV said:


> OK, I looked at your wings.
> I don't know where you get your "Tunisian" bee, the "Tunisian" sample looks more Carni-like vs. your "Caucasian" sample.
> This is purely visual check, but yes - strong Carni-type is should be visually distinct from strong Caucasian-type.
> 
> Unless you have gone to Tunisia and caught some swarms there and brought them over, how can you even talk of the "Tunisian" bees. Pretty much any bee caught in the US today is probably related to Carni and/or Italian in some degree, but not to Tunisian bee.


Thank you GregV. I wasn't sure that I was seeing correctly that the "Tunisian" bees were more positive on the discoidal shift. The drones from our Tunisian like bee colonies we have seemed large, with longer hairs, large abdomens that make them clumsy, and have large/long wings that are pointy and look like a cape covering their bodies. I haven't actually looked at the drones closely enough to be sure, but that has been the impression that I have got from colonies of our Tunisian like bees. Edit: Because of the strangeness of the drones I am leaning towards that these are Tunisian (A. m. intermissa) or Malagasy (A. m. unicolor) genetics in our colonies.





The mother of the queen that the dark drone in above video came from this colony:





Another colony of Tunisian like drones with large winged:




Another video better showing the Tunisian traits of the same colony (they looked hybridized though) This colony was the mother colony for the Tunisian like bee colony that I posted photos of wings in above posts:


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Similar sort of long winged drones in this Madagascar or Malagasy bee colony (A. m. unicolor)





Also, A. m. intermissa drones:




 (skip to 3:43 to see the drones)


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

AR1 said:


> That's a really black bee! I get a few that dark, but mainly in the early spring and I assume they are very old winter bees. The early spring bees are darker than the mid summer bees.


I found something about color changing in bees. I read from Brother Adam's writings that Carnica change color from lighter in Spring to black colored bees in Fall:





Brother ADAM – In Search of the Best Strains of Bee – Second Journey


Description by Brother Adam (1954 original text) of his study trips on the biodiversity of the honey bee Apis mellifera. North Africa, Israel, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Cyprus, Greece and Slovenia



www.pedigreeapis.org




*"In my first report (Bee World 32 : 49 & 57, 1951) I gave a fairly comprehensive outline of the general characteristics of the Carnica bee. That description also holds good for the strains found in Carniola itself. There are undoubtedly some variations; indeed the wide variation between one strain and another is one of the most marked features of the race. We have had some strains which could hardly have been surpassed for uniformity in external characteristics, but which proved valueless in practice. Too much stress is often placed on uniformity, particularly in the Carniolan. There is a factor for yellow in its genetic make-up, which often manifests itself as a seasonal variation. The breeder of one of the best strains assured me that his bees will not infrequently show some yellow coloration on the first dorsal segments in the early part of the summer, but that these markings will completely vanish in subsequent generations raised at a lower temperature in the autumn. Actually the best strains (judged by performance) I have so far come across are known to manifest a fair amount of yellow. In every race, variations in colour find markings are shown in the most startling manner, in the queens, and this is especially true of Carniolans. There is a danger that by placing too much emphasis on external uniformity, we may lose the much more important objective of performance."*


Also, I have read that color can change the hatching bees of the same genetics. I have noticed queen cells that I cut out and put in weak mating nucs will tend to be darker colored than queens raised in strong hives that keep the queen cells warm. So colder temperatures incubate darker colors?


----------



## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Anatolian bees seem to have about zero on the discoidal shift (correct me if I am wrong), too, like the Caucasian bee. I have read that Anatolian bees get a scorching hot summer that gives a summer dearth. It would make better sense that Anatolian bees would be here in North Carolina because we have a summer dearth that starts about mid-May. Caucasian bees have a mid-summer nectar flow in their native area, which might mean they are not as adaptable for summer dearths.








Fig 2. Right forewing of Anatolian honey bee with 19 landmarks plotted...


Download scientific diagram | Right forewing of Anatolian honey bee with 19 landmarks plotted in the vein junctions. from publication: Morphometric Divergence of Anatolian Honeybees through Loss of Original Traits: A Dangerous Outcome of Turkish Apiculture | Five honeybee subspecies exist...




www.researchgate.net





Photo of dark Anatolian bees? From Canakkale, Western Turkey? There abdomens are not that wide though.








Türkiye’de ilk olacak Gökçeada arısına bal ormanı tesisi


Çanakkale’nin Gökçeada ilçesinde, Türkiye’de ilk olma özelliği taşıyan arı ıslahı ve bal ormanı tesisi için arazi ve inceleme çalışmaları yapıldı.Çanakkale Orman Bölge Müdürlüğü; Gökçeada arısı ıslah çalışmalarına destek vermek, Gökçeada arıcılarının ihtiyaçlarına cevap verecek ve milli ekonomiye...




www.sabah.com.tr


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

HaplozygousNut said:


> Yes, but still it is possible that a lot of the native populations could have close to purity from the selective pressure from the natural environment favoring the native subspecies' genetics. MSL did post before that the Italian bees from Italy had a mixture of Carnica genetics, though.


An article about how the migratory commercial beekeepers in Turkey impact the native populations' purity:








Honey Bee Diversity is Swayed by Migratory Beekeeping and Trade Despite Conservation Practices: Genetic Evidences for the Impact of Anthropogenic Factors on Population Structure


Intense admixture of honey bee ( Apis mellifera L.) populations is mostly attributed to migratory beekeeping practices and replacement of queens and colonies with non-native races or hybrids of different subspecies. These two practices are also heavily carried out in Anatolia and Thrace where 5...




www.biorxiv.org


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Here is a colony that looks as if is a cross between Italian and Tunisian, but I think it could be Saharan genetics mixed in:













They do wet cappings, but all our colonies turn into wet cappings after time passes. Does anyone have colonies that retain their dry cappings? I am wondering whether dry cappings are just dry at first, then turn watery later.
Wet cappings of the same colony:





Mother of this colony from last year:





Saharan bees from Algeria:








فحص خلية نحل بعاسلة مع اعطاء بعض النصائح التي تساعد النحال المبتدأ


يفحص النحال الخلايا في فصل الربيع مرة كل اسبوع و خاصة الخلايا التي بعاسلات فهي تكون جد مكتظة منا يساعد على التطريد الطبيعي و عند الفحص يجب على النحل نزع البي...




www.youtube.com


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

The A. m. monticola have thin bands of hair like Tunisian bees do. I have been wondering whether Brother Adam's breeding with the A. m. monticola could have brought in A. m. adansonii genetics here. 

Brother Adam mentioned how the climate was much harsher and dryer in the other mountains where Monticola were, compared to the first mountain he went to, Mt. Elgon in Uganda, when he was looking for A. m. monticola to add to his breeding project. Monticola Picture Log

In this article (http://www.bulletinofinsectology.org/pdfarticles/vol71-2018-257-271fontana.pdf), A. m. adansonii is said to range from Senegal in the west, to Niger in the north, to Zambia in the south in Africa. That is a huge range. And that area is, at least in general, a more humid climate than A. m. scutellata's range. So I was thinking maybe Mt. Elgon was within a hybridization zone of A. m. adansonii, and A. m. scutellata.


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## Gino45 (Apr 6, 2012)

I've done some traveling in Europe. One thing I learned there is that, with some exceptions, folks there can't really tell where people are from just by their appearance. From the language and accent they can determine more about this. With the bees, I'm inclined to think the same thing about appearance. They are probably mostly of mixed lineage and trying to define them as a single race like maybe they used to be prior the man's moving bees from place to place is to me impossible. I know that my bees are of mixed race. All I care about is their ability to produce honey, behavior (demeanor?), and ability to resist disease.


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

GregV said:


> --------------------------------------------------------------
> Consider - it is hardly possible to find pure native Black bees even in the Bashkortostan now days (one of the primal, original locations of the Black bees).
> 
> -------------------------------------------------------


Is really the east thought to be the origins of Apis mellifera mellifera and not out of Northwest Africa (where Tunisian bees) they used to think before? There was a new subspecies related to Apis mellifera mellifera discovered in China (Chinese black bee, Apis mellifera sinisxinyuan) that points to the M lineage coming from the east. [PDF] Genomic Analyses Reveal Demographic History and Temperate Adaptation of the Newly Discovered Honey Bee Subspecies Apis mellifera sinisxinyuan n. ssp | Semantic Scholar

And I have read somewhere about the M lineage coming up very different from all the rest of the other lineages of bees. Was the M lineage isolated in the east away from the main group of bees in Africa, Europe, Middle for a long period of time, from something like an ice age? I was reading a book (David Nelson, Peleg) about how when the continents were together they had large glaciers in the south (Gondwana), and north (Laurasia). And that the mountains were all formed recently, Recent Rapid Uplift of Today's Mountains. If there was a catastrophic event (like the Flood), that might have split the continents apart quickly, and then the continents slowed down rapidly after the break so that they are now very slow moving. The continents moving apart might having something to do with the isolation of the M lineage from the rest of the lineages? 

David Nelson talked about in his book of the glaciers in the large south and north would cause the spinning earth to wobble, and cause strain on the mantle. So that either the glaciers give or the mantle. I was really excited to read David Nelson's book that my dad found from the Seminary Library here getting rid of books. I had wondered whether The Flood caused the continents to break apart. Although, in David Nelson's book, it says that most of the mountains formed from the breaking of the continents, but in the Bible it has mentions of mountains before The Flood. So that doesn't make sense.


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Brother Adam talked about how the Egyptian bee seemed to be breeding pure in Apiaries where other subspecies of bees were present. Egyptian bees make a lot of queen cells. Maybe that could help the workers select for their own Egyptian genes by having a large selection of queens to select from and kill the rest of the queens that are not as pure.





Brother Adam — In search of the best strains of bee — Concluding Journeys


Concluding journeys of Brother Adam in search of the best strains of honeybee



www.pedigreeapis.org





_*"When I set out for Egypt I feared it would be exceedingly difficult to find specimens of the pure fasciata, considering the wholesale importations that have been going on for nearly half a century. I soon learned differently. Whenever I came to a group of primitive hives, I found what was to all intents and purposes the pure native bee. One cannot well make a mistake in its identification, for the external characteristics of the pure fasciata are totally different from those of imported races. For some reason which has not yet been determined, the fasciata queen does not normally mate with drones of foreign races in its native habitat. Indeed doubts were expressed whether it would cross at all, for some experiments carried out in Egypt seemed to show a physical inability. However, this is clearly not so, for crosses were obtained in Europe long ago. We secured cross-matings in the exceptionally unfavourable summer of 1963. But the fact remains that the ancient indigenous bee of Egypt has managed to retain its purity in its native habitat in the midst of imported races. "

"The pure fasciata is according to all accounts greatly addicted to swarming; this must be a hereditary disposition, for the primitive hives are fairly capacious and do not restrict breeding. Many swarm queen cells are constructed; they are usually not built singly but in clusters even on the face of the combs — a characteristic I have not observed in any other race. Anatolians, Syrians and Cyprians will construct queen cells in clusters; but always on the edges of the comb. The queen cells of fasciata are small and almost smooth. "*_

Another person commented about the same thing about the Egyptian bees breeding pure:








The Egyptian Honey Bee


"And the Lord taught the Bee to build its cells in hills, on trees, and in men's habitations; then to eat of all the produce (of the earth)...




adetourbywayofthebeehive.blogspot.com




_*
"I cannot say with certainty that the bees recovered by SEKEM are "pure" Lamarkii - maintaining pure characteristics in the open world of mating where a virgin queen will be charged by all manner of drones seems improbable, but is not altogether impossible - though I do think the bees I worked with are notably different from the Carniolans located at the back of the apiary (in terms of size and color especially). "*_


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

HaplozygousNut said:


> Is really the east thought to be the origins of Apis mellifera mellifera and not out of Northwest Africa (where Tunisian bees) they used to think before?


The real question is - how far do you want to go?

Most certainly, if you go back in time far enough, most of Eurasia was under the sheet of ice.
Any speak of the honey bees anywhere in Eurasia during the Ice Age is irrelevant.
Of course they came from Africa - originally - within the Ice Age time frame.

But if you roll back only 200-300 years, then certainly Eurasia is the origin for any North American bees.
So these talks are not absolute, but rather time context sensitive.


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

GregV said:


> The real question is - how far do you want to go?
> 
> Most certainly, if you go back in time far enough, most of Eurasia was under the sheet of ice.
> Any speak of the honey bees anywhere in Eurasia during the Ice Age is irrelevant.
> ...


Indeed! I just recently saw a photo in the David Nelson Peleg book that showed Asia free of Glacial Ice, but a lot of Europe under Glacier, and then the southern Glacier went as far as Central Africa by the stria signs! How could this be with Siberia being such a cold place now? I recently saw another map showing old continent locations in an Atlas Book with Asia being mostly underwater! Maybe that is an explanation for lack of Glaciers in Asia?


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## joebeewhisperer (May 13, 2020)

Gino45 said:


> folks there can't really tell where people are from just by their appearance. From the language and accent they can determine more about this. With the bees, I'm inclined to think the same thing about appearance


I agree a purebred anything is unlikely. That said, we cut a downed bee tree yesterday and I took a bunch of hits from what was about 10% solid black workers. Also finally found someone close by (about 20 miles) that runs the old black bees exclusively. His neighbors levy a lot of complaints, and this is in an area where folks live 100yd/m apart.

I may see if I can get some samples from him. Again, I know nothing that can interbreed is going to stay”pure”. But when you find one of these colonies the queen is jet black and so are the workers. They are also probably 15-20% smaller than my bees. I guess some/most of that is accounted for in cell size.They remain distinct “looking” anyway.


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## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

joebeewhisperer said:


> ...the queen is jet black and so are the workers. They are also probably 15-20% smaller than my bees. I guess some/most of that is accounted for in cell size.


Joe:

I observe something similar around here. Makes me wonder if some of the old dark bee genetics of yesteryear are still lurking around in the background. That said, given that AMM tends to hail from the more northern natural range of the honey bee, I wonder if the dark bee genetics in-and-of-itself would likely not be the main contributor to smaller sized bees?

All that said, the darker colonies around here tend to be comprised of workers of a notably smaller size.

I hope you are able to finish the season on a high note and find a suitable use for your extra queens.

Russ


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## joebeewhisperer (May 13, 2020)

Litsinger said:


> All that said, the darker colonies around here tend to be comprised of workers of a notably smaller size.


Friday when I was helping an older gentleman in the neighborhood do a cut out (tree had fallen) there was about 6 vertical feet of comb in about a 10-12" hole. Some of the comb was several years old and may have had several generations raised in it. As we were trying to salvage some combs with some brood into deep frames, we ended up with an EZ Nuc box full of small, mostly empty pieces and he carried away maybe 1/2 gallon of comb honey chunks. Among the smaller pieces was a batch of brood comb I dissected. The worker larvae was tiny, really tiny. Again, it may have been from the cells getting caked up with cocoons, but it really didn't look think-walled. Just looked that way by design. 

I had taken a 4 frame nuc along with an extra capped resource frame to drop in the box as I figured a Sept cutout had almost no chance of building up. This ultimately was why I was comfortable uncapping some larvae. I was really looking for mites, which I did not find. The cavity was full of crevices containing probably 100 hive beetles which we killed manually where we could, but nothing was slimed. I tried for hours to locate the queen in a pretty good population of bees but never found her. Dropped in another queen in a California cage with a candy plug just in case the local queen wasn't in the mass of bees. I'll let them sort it out. I don't think they were straight A.m.m. even by my semi-loose definition. But I'm still intrigued that a race of small black bees still has a good genetic foothold here. Not sure how long it will last.


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## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

joebeewhisperer said:


> But I'm still intrigued that a race of small black bees still has a good genetic foothold here.


For my part, I hope that feral queen is roaming around in there, and with a little lift from you this colony is able to survive this winter and give you some bona fide locally-adapted dark bee genetics to incorporate into your already booming bee business. Do keep us posted.

Russ


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

joebeewhisperer said:


> Among the smaller pieces was a batch of brood comb I dissected. The worker larvae was tiny, really tiny. Again, it may have been from the cells getting caked up with cocoons, but it really didn't look think-walled. Just looked that way by design.


This is just telling that these bees have been small for many generations before they even moved into the tree.

Most likely the swarm that moved into the tree was already naturally small-cell - everything they would build was small-cell by design.



> I don't think they were straight A.m.m. even by my semi-loose definition.


IMO, anyone still looking for A.m.m. in North America is fooling themselves.
What we have is (in some pockets, like yours) locally evolved mutts based on a variety of inputs.
These are true "North American" bees, akin to the "Russians" in the Far East that also evolved in a very similar way.
If anything, these "North American" bees are to be found, identified, and preserved in the exact environment and state they are.
Just like the "Russians" are now considered a primitive, separate sub-species - the same way certain populations of the "North American" bees need to be looked at (akin one can not enter the same water twice - it is gone - to be still looking for some A.m.m).


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## AR1 (Feb 5, 2017)

For years Dadant sold a line of black queens, the Midnight queens. That was many years ago, but the black color genes are out there and can show up in any mixed population.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

AR1 said:


> For years Dadant sold a line of black queens, the Midnight queens. That was many years ago, but the black color genes are out there and can show up in any mixed population.


Right.
These black queens had nothing to do with the A.m.m. - outside of being black.
But the genes are floating around, surely.


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## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

There is still a good bit of 'M' lineage floating around- at least if contemporary genetic mapping is to be trusted:









Is There A Difference Between Domesticated And Feral Bees?


On Bee-L recently, there was a discussion concerning the veracity of feral colonies in the US exhibiting a distinct genetic footprint from managed colonies. In response, Mr. Randy Oliver posted his findings, outlined in the following article...




www.beesource.com


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

Litsinger said:


> There is still a good bit of 'M' lineage floating around- at least if contemporary genetic mapping is to be trusted:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Surely the genetic presence will be present about forever.
It really never goes away.
But condensed to the point of producing near pure A.m.m. specimens?
Doubt it.

My VSH line is very clearly distinct (to me) - because they buzz me.
For example, I know that one of the re-queened swarms is now entirely turned over - started buzzing me first time just the past weekend.

Buzzing/head-butting is one of A.m.m. traits.
But are my VSH bees significantly A.m.m.?
Not really. Not to consider them kinda/sorta A.m.m.
They seem to have some Russian blood in them (and by extension A.m.m) - I measured the wings.
Still, they buzz but they don't sting.


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## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

GregV said:


> If anything, these "North American" bees are to be found, identified, and preserved in the exact environment and state they are.


Good observation, GregV.


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Gino45 said:


> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
> I once saw a large black with white striped bee caught inside of a resaturant window in Istanbul. I wondered if it was a Caucasian, a Carniolan, or perhaps a Russian. I assumed from the white stripes that it wasn't a 'black' bee, but I don't know.
> Doesn't all that really matters is the viability and behavioral characteristics of the bees which we actually do have?


The black bees with white bands of hair that you saw in Istanbul could be the wetestern strain of Apis mellifera anatolica because that is the native bee there from these range maps:


https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1879/2549/files/EU_Apis_Mellifera_L_Map.svg_501e682f-379a-410d-9cc9-14e7159eb80d_grande.png?v=1541201213




https://adbkabees.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/geo-mellifera.gif?w=760



Although, this range map shows Apis mellifera carnica as being in the European part of Turkey...




__





ARICILIK | Marmaris Bal Evi Osmaniye - Farkındalık Ve Markalaşma Adına


Marmaris Bal Evi Osmaniye - Farkındalık Ve Markalaşma Adına




www.marmarisbalevi.com.tr





Western Anatolian (?) bee photo:








Türkiye’de ilk olacak Gökçeada arısına bal ormanı tesisi


Çanakkale’nin Gökçeada ilçesinde, Türkiye’de ilk olma özelliği taşıyan arı ıslahı ve bal ormanı tesisi için arazi ve inceleme çalışmaları yapıldı.Çanakkale Orman Bölge Müdürlüğü; Gökçeada arısı ıslah çalışmalarına destek vermek, Gökçeada arıcılarının ihtiyaçlarına cevap verecek ve milli ekonomiye...




www.sabah.com.tr


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

I found an article about Spanish black bees coming to America in the Bee Journal this month! It is by Peter L. Borst.

He has quotes from old writings about Spanish black bee introductions:
_*"-------------the story has become widespread that the Spanish, upon not finding European honey bees in New Spain, proceeded to import them as the Dutch, English and Germans had apparently done in North America. Despite the flimsiest of evidence, Donald Brand created an elaborate scenario complete with many pages of sources and citations. In his oft-quoted 'The Honey Bee In New Spain and Mexico' he said:*_

* 'There was an introduction of the European bee into New Spain in the 1520s or 1530s. The early colonial Spaniards and creoles in New Spain were not bee-keepers, the highland Indians were poor beekeepers, and soon most of the European bees were quite wild. The European bee went with the religious orders (especially the Franciscans and Jesuits) into nothern Mexico, were introduced to the Indians, and eventually went wild in the Sierra Madre Occidental and Sierra Madre Oriental, where today [1970] there is the greatest concentration of wild small black European bees.'*
_*"*_
But, the Spaniards are said to have prevented bees from being imported to North America:

_* "The first introduction of the honeybee to the Western Hemisphere occurred in North America before the end of the sixteenth century. Honeybees were numerous in the countryside of the English colonies of Virginia and Massachusetts by 1650. The Spanish, on the other hand, successfully kept bees from being introduced into their colonies for many years. This apparently was done to guarantee the New World ecclesiastical candle wax market for beeswax produced in Spain."*_

There were possibly introductions of bees from Portugal earlier, so they may be the first bees to come to the New World.


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Eduardo Gomes said:


> you're welcomme HaplozygousNut. Today is how we think: our bee is the result of a cross between the A and M strains. We have a variety of scientific data that supports that ... until there is a credible rebuttal. I leave below the summary of a scientific publication that addressed this subject and its source.
> 
> "[…] A more complete picture of the complex diversity patterns of IHBs is revealed that includes 164 novel haplotypes, 113 belonging to lineage A and 51 to lineage M and within lineage A and 69 novel haplotypes that belong to sub-lineage AI, 13 to AII, and 31 to AIII. Within lineage M, two novel haplotypes show a striking architecture with features of lineages A and M, which based on sequence comparisons and relationships among haplotypes are seemingly ancestral. […]" source: Mitochondrial DNA variation of Apis mellifera iberiensis: further insights from a large-scale study using sequence data of the tRNAleu-cox2 intergenic region - Apidologie





Eduardo Gomes said:


> A.m.iberiensis is a natural hybrid M and A lineage. A.m.mellifera (black bee) is M lineage. Photos of my a.m.iberisensis:
> View attachment 52117
> View attachment 52119
> View attachment 52121
> View attachment 52123


Hello Eduardo Gomes. How are you? I have been wondering about whether the Spanish black bee (Apis mellifera iberiensis) is actually a valid subspecies or just bees from a large hybridization zone. I have noticed surprising consistency in some of our bee colonies of traits of Tunisian bee or German black bee that has made me think that the bees could be breeding to their own kind by some methods within hybridization zones. 

Have you noticed any variation in traits in your bees in Portugal or are they uniform? The genetic range map of the bees in Iberia in the article (Mitochondrial DNA variation of Apis mellifera iberiensis: further insights from a large-scale study using sequence data of the tRNAleu-cox2 intergenic region - Apidologie), that you have showed us before, only shows mtDNA that does not reveal exactly what percentage of genes of each subspecies each colony has. I am curious whether there is much variation in the genetics from colony to colony in Spain or Portugal or whether they are a uniform mix from colony to colony, which might mean that Apis mellifera iberiensis is a valid subspecies of a mix of two lineages (lineages A and M) that is just now evolving from possibly a recent clashing of subspecies in a new environment, such as after a long ice age.


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

joebeewhisperer said:


> I agree a purebred anything is unlikely. That said, we cut a downed bee tree yesterday and I took a bunch of hits from what was about 10% solid black workers. Also finally found someone close by (about 20 miles) that runs the old black bees exclusively. His neighbors levy a lot of complaints, and this is in an area where folks live 100yd/m apart.
> 
> I may see if I can get some samples from him. Again, I know nothing that can interbreed is going to stay”pure”. But when you find one of these colonies the queen is jet black and so are the workers. They are also probably 15-20% smaller than my bees. I guess some/most of that is accounted for in cell size.They remain distinct “looking” anyway.


Yes, that is true. It is doubtful that any bees in America are technically pure.


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Litsinger said:


> Joe:
> 
> I observe something similar around here. Makes me wonder if some of the old dark bee genetics of yesteryear are still lurking around in the background. That said, given that AMM tends to hail from the more northern natural range of the honey bee, I wonder if the dark bee genetics in-and-of-itself would likely not be the main contributor to smaller sized bees?
> 
> ...


The 5.2mm cell size foundation that is commonly used by beekeepers now is larger than even what the largest subspecies of bees use for their brood nests. Also, Italian bees are a large subspecies:





Brother Adam — In search of the best strains of bee — Concluding Journeys


Concluding journeys of Brother Adam in search of the best strains of honeybee



www.pedigreeapis.org





*"The pure sahariensis is not yellow; the colour might best be described as light tan. But a wide variation is manifested, and the colour extends in varying degrees to all the dorsal segments. Owing to the darker colour and the considerable variation in markings, the Saharan bee is by no means as attractive as the more brightly coloured races.  In size this bee is midway between ligustica and syriaca. The queens also vary in colour, from bright yellow to dark brown — though never black. The drones are remarkably uniform and have two conspicuous bronze–coloured segments."*

But, it could be that the "Italian" bees that Brother Adam had experience with were actually Ligurian bees from a hybridization zone of German black and Italian bees in Northwestern Italy. Which might mean that the pure Italian bee is actually smaller, because the German black bee is a large subspecies? German black bee photo from Liguria, Italy (http://www.bulletinofinsectology.org/pdfarticles/vol71-2018-257-271fontana.pdf Page 3).

I have read somewhere about the Asian honeybees (Apis cerana) from Japanese islands get smaller and darker as they get farther north and larger as they go to southern islands. So there might be something similar with European honeybees (Apis mellifera)?

There is variation in cell size though:


http://www.elgon.es/naturalcellsize/image0o.JPG


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

HaplozygousNut said:


> Indeed! I just recently saw a photo in the David Nelson Peleg book that showed Asia free of Glacial Ice, but a lot of Europe under Glacier, and then the southern Glacier went as far as Central Africa by the stria signs! How could this be with Siberia being such a cold place now? I recently saw another map showing old continent locations in an Atlas Book with Asia being mostly underwater! Maybe that is an explanation for lack of Glaciers in Asia?


Here are photos of Asia being mostly free of Glaciers. Interestingly, Alaska is free of ice in the central part.:








Last Glacial Maximum - Wikipedia







en.wikipedia.org





Here is the book that I was talking about, Peleg by David Nelson:




Photos of the Glaciers at beginning and 1:59 in the video above.

Pangea breaking apart could be the reason why we are having Global warming now because we are coming out of a long Ice Age.


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

GregV said:


> Surely the genetic presence will be present about forever.
> It really never goes away.
> But condensed to the point of producing near pure A.m.m. specimens?
> Doubt it.
> ...


Could this buzzing and head-butting trait of A.m.m. be for thick haired bears? By being very eager to attack, the bees might come in fast like a missile to penetrate the thick coat of hair of a bear.


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

HaplozygousNut said:


> I found an article about Spanish black bees coming to America in the Bee Journal this month! It is by Peter L. Borst.
> 
> He has quotes from old writings about Spanish black bee introductions:
> _*"-------------the story has become widespread that the Spanish, upon not finding European honey bees in New Spain, proceeded to import them as the Dutch, English and Germans had apparently done in North America. Despite the flimsiest of evidence, Donald Brand created an elaborate scenario complete with many pages of sources and citations. In his oft-quoted 'The Honey Bee In New Spain and Mexico' he said:*_
> ...


Here are Portuguese bees genetics in Peru:








Mitochondrial DNA Variation in Peruvian Honey Bee (Apis mellifera L.) Populations Using the tRNAleu-cox2 Intergenic Region


Mitochondrial DNA variations of Peruvian honey bee populations were surveyed by using the tRNAleu-cox2 intergenic region. Only two studies have characterized these populations, indicating the presence of Africanized honey bee colonies in different regions of Peru and varied levels of...




www.mdpi.com





Is there any genetic testing for AIII lineage in America?

Here is genetics of Portuguese bees (AIII lineage) in Namibia and Sao Tom Island where the Portuguese were.





Figure 1 | Heredity







www.nature.com


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## joebeewhisperer (May 13, 2020)

Saw your latest and thought I’d throw in a random bee video from Sat.

20% smaller (regardless of cell size) and apparently healthy (hundreds of them despite being taken for diseased).

Not claiming this is any particular bee. Just saying this is what we always thought were German.


__
http://instagr.am/p/CUWDe8cjHra/


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

HaplozygousNut said:


> The A. m. monticola have thin bands of hair like Tunisian bees do. I have been wondering whether Brother Adam's breeding with the A. m. monticola could have brought in A. m. adansonii genetics here.
> 
> Brother Adam mentioned how the climate was much harsher and dryer in the other mountains where Monticola were, compared to the first mountain he went to, Mt. Elgon in Uganda, when he was looking for A. m. monticola to add to his breeding project. Monticola Picture Log
> 
> In this article (http://www.bulletinofinsectology.org/pdfarticles/vol71-2018-257-271fontana.pdf), A. m. adansonii is said to range from Senegal in the west, to Niger in the north, to Zambia in the south in Africa. That is a huge range. And that area is, at least in general, a more humid climate than A. m. scutellata's range. So I was thinking maybe Mt. Elgon was within a hybridization zone of A. m. adansonii, and A. m. scutellata.


I just found an article about genetic testing of bees recently. It says Apis mellifera adansonii and Apis mellifera scutellata and Apis mellifera jemenitica are in Uganda:








A revision of subspecies structure of western honey bee Apis mellifera


The taxonomy of honey bee A. mellifera contains a lot of issues due to the specificity of population structure, features of biology and resolutions of…




www.sciencedirect.com





This could be why we have Yemeni bee genetics in the US from the Mt. Elgon genetics in the Buckfast bee imported here. The nectar flow might be a big factor in what subspecies are dominant in an area. 

It also shows the range of Saharan bees as being larger than previously known. This could explain Brother Adam finding bees that looked like Italian hybrids in Morocco, that were actually Saharan bees.
*Saharan bee range:*


Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Mauritania, Western Sahara


----------



## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

joebeewhisperer said:


> Saw your latest and thought I’d throw in a random bee video from Sat.
> 
> 20% smaller (regardless of cell size) and apparently healthy (hundreds of them despite being taken for diseased).
> 
> ...


They look like they have rather narrow abdomens compared to German black bees which have broad abdomens. I have seen some British German black bees that have narrower abdomens though.

Does your area in Tennessee get a summer dearth? Greek bees can be mostly light with some dark colored bees in the same colony from a photo I have seen in a bee magazine. That bee magazine article said that their dearth starts in June or so, if I remember correctly.








Apis mellifera cecropia - Wikipedia







en.wikipedia.org





Do you bees have any signs of Varroa viruses such as deformed wing syndrome? If they do that might mean they are commercial Italian bees which are susceptible to varroa. Feral bees on the other hand should be resistant to varroa.

It is weird that the commercial Italian bee dominates beekeeping. I guess that there is something about the Italian bee that is special. Maybe they maintain large and active populations throughout the year instead of going into dormancy? That might make Italians more robust to stresses from beekeepers management? 

Our bees stop most of their flight activity when the nectar flow ends during May here in North Carolina. But then, if fed sugar syrup, will start flights again and expand their cluster to fill the whole hive with bees. I can't disturb the bees during the summer dearth, otherwise they stress easily when in a dormant state and die. Also, I can't add any combs which kills them quickly, even for colonies that have been continually fed with syrup for a time so that their population is built up large to guard combs. The syrup feeding doesn't have the same effect as a natural nectar flow to pull the bees out of their fragile dormant state. If I can get some commercial Italian bees I could compare with our bees colonies that I think are feral bees (They are extremely Varroa resistant) to see if their is any difference. Also, during the summer dearth it is hard to get bee colonies to drink syrup because they are not very active in the hive. But during the nectar flow our bees take to syrup feeding very well. So it is better to feed starving colonies before the nectar flow is over.

If the commercial Italian bees maintain large and active populations through Winter, then they may be more robust when there are humidity problems because they can evaporate the condensation that accumulates on the lid of the hive when their is no top ventilation. The opposite could be true, too, because larger clusters would cause more respiration and humidity. And larger clusters may be better at staying warm. In the wild bees might have a delicate balance of air flow that keeps the bees from getting the humidity problems that beekeepers have in modern hives during Winter.


----------



## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

HaplozygousNut said:


> -----------------------------------------------
> 
> David Nelson talked about in his book of the glaciers in the large south and north would cause the spinning earth to wobble, and cause strain on the mantle. So that either the glaciers give or the mantle. I was really excited to read David Nelson's book that my dad found from the Seminary Library here getting rid of books. I had wondered whether The Flood caused the continents to break apart. Although, in David Nelson's book, it says that most of the mountains formed from the breaking of the continents, but in the Bible it has mentions of mountains before The Flood. So that doesn't make sense.


Quote from the book "Peleg" by David Nelson about mountains forming:

_"In their book, The Origin of Mountains, Cliff Ollier and Colin Pain make these significant statements. 'It is remarkable that mountains in many parts of the globe, all characterized by rapid uplift after a period of rapid planation [erosion that created horizontal sedimentary rocks] should occur in so many different tectonic styles [types of mountains]....Why should a near-global pulse of mountain building take so many different forms?....And why should a period of tectonic quiet [period of erosion and deposition] be followed so rapidly by a period of great uplift?....We do not yet know what causes this short, sharp period of uplift, but at least the abandonment of naive mountain hypotheses might lead to further realistic explanations'"_


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

HaplozygousNut said:


> I just found an article about genetic testing of bees recently. It says Apis mellifera adansonii and Apis mellifera scutellata and Apis mellifera jemenitica are in Uganda:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


The Apis mellifera jemenitica in the Middle East could be a different subspecies or lineage (the "Y" lineage was discovered in East Africa, not Middle East) from the Apis mellifera jemenitica in Africa. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.3896/IBRA.1.52.3.03

Quote from page 129:
_*"The genetic relationship between African and Arabian Peninsula Apis mellifera jemenitica populations, and their relationships to other surrounding subspecies have not been conclusively addressed. The available mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) studies indicate that several different mtDNA haplotypes are found in populations referred to as Apis mellifera jemenitica. Ethiopian samples referred to as Apis mellifera jemenitica (n = 16 colonies from 3 sites) were reported to possess a new mitochondrial lineage ―Y‖ which differs from the ―O‖ lineage of Near East Asia and ―A‖ lineage of Africa (Franck et al., 2001). The honey bees of Sudan are classified as Apis mellifera jemenitica based on morphometrics (Ruttner, 1988), but mtDNA analysis did not confirm the presence of ―Y‖ lineage (El-Niweiri and Moritz, 2008). Likewise, preliminary studies of A. m. jemenitica from Saudi Arabia (8 colonies) and Yemen (Socotra Island, 7 colonies) revealed the presence of O and A lineage haplotypes, but did not detect any Y lineage mitochondrial sequences (Smith, unpublished data). These results are consistent with the contention of Meixner et al. (2011) that A. m. simensis of Ethiopia is distinct from A. m. jemenitica. This situation seems analogous to that of A. m. monticola. Apis mellifera populations in different high mountain areas of Africa have been grouped together as Apis mellifera monticola on the basis of morphometric similarity (Meixner et al., 1989); this suggested that these were relicts of a once larger population that occupied lower elevations at times when the climate was cooler. However, a later mtDNA study (Hepburn et al., 2000) did not support the idea of a monophyletic group of relictual populations occupying an archipelago of high altitude habitat islands. On the basis of mtDNA evidence, they concluded that the populations on different mountains should be regarded as ecotypically differentiated populations, each derived from the populations surrounding their particular mountain and convergent on morphology adapted to high altitude habitats (Hepburn and Radloff, 1998). A similar situation may pertain to A. m. jemenitica. The morphometrically similar African and Asian populations currently called ―Apis mellifera jemenitica‖ could comprise a single monophyletic lineage, adapted to hot, arid conditions. Alternatively, A. m. jemenitica could comprise several different, genetically distinct populations that differentiated from their respective neighbouring populations and converged on similar physical characteristics along with adaptation to similar hot arid habitats. These populations might also experience gene flow from other neighbouring populations, leading to the introduction and spread of mtDNA haplotypes characteristic of their neighbours. In this regard Franck et al. (2001) particularly suggested the importance of surveying microsatellites or other nuclear markers of the honey bee subspecies from Eastern Africa and the Middle East, to better understand their phylogeography. The African and Asian Apis mellifera jemenitica have been geographically isolated from one another for several thousands of years, and the occurrence of independent evolutionary changes as a result of long-term geographical isolation has been well stated (Avise et al., 1987; Smith 1991a, 1991b; Smith 2002). The newly described A. m. simensis in Ethiopia indicates that much additional survey of African and Arabian populations is needed before the diversity and distribution of A. m. jemenitica can be described with certainty "*_

Apis mellifera simensis from Ethiopia could be in the "Y" lineage.

The African Apis mellifera jemenitica are more bright yellow colored. They must be beautiful.
Quote form page 126:
*"The colour of the A. m. jemenitica of Africa is a more intense yellow (pigmentation of tergite 4) than that of Al-Ghamdi et al. A. m. jemenitica of the Arabian Peninsula (Table 1). For example, Amssalu et al. (2004) reported more intense yellow pigmentation values for A. m. jemenitica populations from Ethiopia than from the Arabian Peninsula. Worker honey bees with entirely yellow abdomens without any bands and drones with yellow abdomens were observed in the A. m. jemenitica population of Ethiopia (Nuru, 2002)."*

Yellow Apis mellifera jemenitica picture:
http://www.atlashymenoptera.net/services/getImage.ashx?id=9354 from Apis of the world: Apis of the world

Apis mellifera jementicia from the Middle East look like Apis cerana. They are the smallest subspecies of Western Honeybee (Apis mellifera), and smaller than some larger subspecies of Apis cerana. Apis mellifera jemenitica (?) from Middle East:





The Malagasy bee (Apis mellifera unicolor) might be a new sub-lineage of the Africa "A" lineage:








Large-scale mitochondrial DNA analysis of native honey bee Apis mellifera populations reveals a new African subgroup private to the South West Indian Ocean islands - BMC Genomic Data


Background The South West Indian Ocean (SWIO) archipelagos and Madagascar constitute a hotspot of biodiversity with a high rate of endemism. In this area, the endemic subspecies A. m. unicolor has been described in Madagascar. It belongs to the African lineage, one of the four described...




bmcgenomdata.biomedcentral.com




Quote:
_*"Formerly reported ND2 region divergence level between AI (comprising A. m. adansonii, A. m. capensis, A. m. monticola and A. m. scutellata samples) and AIII sub-lineages (A. m. intermissa, A.m. iberiensis, A. m. sicula and A. m. sahariensis) in Africa (0.62% ± 0.11) was even lower than the distance found between the insular and continental groups of AI sub-lineage (1.44% ± 0.48) [4]. This divergence level is even comparable to the one observed between the latest confirmed Z sub-lineage [9, 28] and the others AI and AIII."*_

__
https://www.reddit.com/r/SEED_Madagascar/comments/pku86x


----------



## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

HaplozygousNut said:


> Here are photos of Asia being mostly free of Glaciers. Interestingly, Alaska is free of ice in the central part.:
> 
> 
> 
> ...





HaplozygousNut said:


> Alaska and Asia being mostly free of Glaciers could be from the dry climate. Also, if I understand correctly, Siberia gets very strong air pressure in Winter that pushes or keeps all the moist air out.
> 
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glacier#Geography
> ...


----------



## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

HaplozygousNut said:


> ---------------------------------------------
> 
> Honeybee video from Atlas mountains in North Africa:
> 
> ...


Maybe the bees in the video from the Atlas mountains are a black strain of Saharan bee?

Saharan bees in Algeria:








Figure 3: Overview of an ArcGIS dot representation of all mtDNA...


Download scientific diagram | Overview of an ArcGIS dot representation of all mtDNA haplotypes recorded in each of the 22 Algerian populations that were studied. The two imported haplotypes (C7 and M4) were identified in the east and north of the country, respectively. However, haplotypes A2 and...




www.researchgate.net


----------



## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

HaplozygousNut said:


> Maybe the bees in the video from the Atlas mountains are a black strain of Saharan bee?
> 
> Saharan bees in Algeria:
> 
> ...


There are some "M" lineage population in northern Algeria? C lineage, too?

Maltese bees are said to be wider abdomen than even German black bees!
Quote form this website about Maltese bees: https://www.melitabees.com/black-queens.html#/
*"The honey bees of Malta are similar in size to A m Sicula and A m Intermissa, but have shorter legs and wings; the wings are also much narrower. The abdomen of the bees found in Malta is considerably wider (ster- num index [SI] = 77.74) than in its relative, A m intermissa (81.52). Thus, A m ruttneri is the ’broadest’ subspecies of A mellifera, even broader than A m mellifera (SI = 78.61) (Ruttner 1992). While the pigmentation of the bees does not differ much from A m intermissa or A m sicula, they have considerably longer hair on the abdomen. Whereas the cubital distances of A m ruttneri differ greatly from A m sicula and A m intermissa, the cubital index is similar to A m sicula, but different from A m intermissa. "*


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

HaplozygousNut said:


> ----------------------------------------------------
> 
> 
> These look similar to German black bees with the wide abdomens to me. I could be misidentifying a strain of wide abdomen Carnica as German black bees.
> ...


The person who made that video of black colored bees is from Kiev, Ukraine. I looked up in Ukrainian with google translate "honeybees" and found a dark thorax haired drone on facebook. Facebook
German black bees are at the northern tip of Ukraine, but most of Ukraine is Carnica or Sossimai (strain of Carnica?). Figure 1-Distribution of the various subspecies of the European honey... (https://f9esw7naqqlx7ckf3nldwtppv2v...ds/2018/12/rasy-medonosnyh-pchel-v-evrope.jpg from https://www.paseka.in.ua/en/ukrainskaja-stepnaja-poroda-pchel/)
Another photo with workers that have darker or dull thoracic hairs like German black bees do Facebook

More bees from Ukraine that have dark thoracic haired drones and wide abdomen workers like German black bees I think (said to be Apis mellifera sossimai):




 (skip to 23:12 to see dark haired drones). Does A. m. sossimai have "zero" or "positive" on discoidal shift?


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

HaplozygousNut said:


> ---------------------------------------
> 
> German black bee coming back in Germany? Broad abdomens like German black bees. (Skip to 3:48 in video to see the bees)
> 
> ...


There are dark thoracic haired drones that I didn't notice that first time I watched the video above. Skip to 11:36 in the video in above quoted post to see the dark thorax drones. They must be at least some German black bee blood in them, maybe even close to purity if the particular strain of German black bee there in Germany is supposed to be thick banded.

Here is the same beekeeper from Germany that has the wide abdomen German black like bees.. They have that dull greenish hue to the workers' thoracic hairs. But only a few moderately dark thoracic haired drones that I can see from a quick look at the video:




 (Skip to 14:26 to see the bees)


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

HaplozygousNut said:


> A different light and solid colored strain of Tunisian, I think:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


The light solid colored, wide abdomen bees that I thought were a strain of Tunisian bee actually look more similar to what are probably certain kinds of Saharan bees.




 (beginning and 2:02 shows the bees)





 (skip to 2:20)






الخلية الطويلة الجزء الأول ( فحص الخلية ) (skip to 0:51 to see the bees and dry cappings that I guess turn into wet cappings over time)


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

HaplozygousNut said:


> I looked up "native honeybee" in Persian (
> 
> 
> زنبور عسل بومی - Google Search
> ...





HaplozygousNut said:


> Here is a colony that looks as if is a cross between Italian and Tunisian, but I think it could be Saharan genetics mixed in:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


The bees that I thought might have Saharan genetics in them look similar to the Persian bees (Apis mellifera meda) in Iraq:
Another video of them:








Apis mellifera meda? (Iraqi bees?)


https://m.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100040885702513&sk=photos




www.youtube.com





They have very wet cappings compared to our other colonies. I haven't been able to find narrow/pointy abdomen Saharan bees looking online, but the Iraqi bees have the more pointy abdomen like Tunisian bees do:


https://m.facebook.com/1837497899840858/photos/a.1837498426507472/1837498359840812/?type=3&source=48



Photos of the colony attached below.

Video of "Iraqi hybrid bees":
النحل الهجين العراقي (skip to 0:54 in video to see the bees)

Photo of bees from Iran? Very wet cappings on the right of the photo:


http://aminchak7983.rozblog.com/post/16



The Persian bees seem to have black drones despite all the workers being light colored. This might explain why light colored drones are uncommon in the light colored colonies we have here in North Carolina, usually the light colored colonies have black drones or drones with some lighter coloration of the first couple segments. Our light colored bees tend to be aggressive, too.

More photos of bees in Iraq (?):








ملكة نحل عراقية مع وصيفاتها والشغالات ، والذكر في منحل عسل زهيري | Honey bee, Bee, Honey


Jul 12, 2016 - ملكة نحل عراقية مع وصيفاتها والشغالات ، والذكر في منحل عسل زهيري




www.pinterest.com






https://honarfardi.com/career-skills-tutorial/other/bees-keeping-in-winter/



Now the Persian and Anatolian bees are in the sublineage "Z" of the African lineage "A"!








A revision of subspecies structure of western honey bee Apis mellifera


The taxonomy of honey bee A. mellifera contains a lot of issues due to the specificity of population structure, features of biology and resolutions of…




www.sciencedirect.com





Arabian bees (A. am. jemenitica) look similar, too:








العسل الشبواني في اليمن.. الشفاء والعيش من بطون النحل


العسل الشبواني في اليمن الشفاء والعيش من بطون النحل ...




iraq.sahafahn.net





More photos of bees similar to Tunisian bees with the dark thoracic haired drones:





דבורים Bacchist: תיאור ותיאור


Buckfast הוא זן מועדף של כוורנים בכל רחבי העולם, bred על האיים הבריטיים על ידי אחיו הנזיר הצנוע אדם (בעולם - קרל Kehrle). מקדיש את כל חייו למדעי רבייה, אנגלי עם




iw.vision1cyclings.com


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

HaplozygousNut said:


> The person who made that video of black colored bees is from Kiev, Ukraine. I looked up in Ukrainian with google translate "honeybees" and found a dark thorax haired drone on facebook. Facebook
> German black bees are at the northern tip of Ukraine, but most of Ukraine is Carnica or Sossimai (strain of Carnica?). Figure 1-Distribution of the various subspecies of the European honey... (https://f9esw7naqqlx7ckf3nldwtppv2v...ds/2018/12/rasy-medonosnyh-pchel-v-evrope.jpg from https://www.paseka.in.ua/en/ukrainskaja-stepnaja-poroda-pchel/)
> 
> -----------------------------------------------------


Bees from Bulgaria:








close up of bees on honeycomb in apiary and a queen excluder grille - selective focus, copy space Stock Photo - Alamy


Download this stock image: close up of bees on honeycomb in apiary and a queen excluder grille - selective focus, copy space - 2B6MTTR from Alamy's library of millions of high resolution stock photos, illustrations and vectors.




www.alamy.com





Macedonian bees:








Macedonian Bee stock photo


Stock photo Macedonian Bee (Apis mellifera macedonica) workers on honeycomb, native to Balkans and Greece. Buy a licence on mindenpictures.com




www.mindenpictures.com





Facebook (Ukrainian bee? Narrow abdomen (?) like Macedonian bee above, but dark thoracic haired drone).

Compare with Spanish black bees from northeastern Spain (Girona). Wider abdomens they look like:








Apis Mellifera or Iberian black bee, the native species of the area...


Apis Mellifera or Iberian black bee, the native species of the area on August 10, 2019 in Girona, Spain. Climate change and extensive agriculture is affecting the population and survival of hives....



www.gettyimages.ae


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Said to be Saharan bees:



__ https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=1614332415314151&id=1614214398659286



Algeria Saharan bees:


Activités







Nâama : Nécessité d’adopter des moyens modernes pour préserver l’abeille saharienne |







lecourrier-dalgerie.com


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

HaplozygousNut said:


> The bees that I thought might have Saharan genetics in them look similar to the Persian bees (Apis mellifera meda) in Iraq:
> Another video of them:
> 
> 
> ...


I found a photo of Saharan bees that look similar to the Persian bees, with the pointy abdomen and similar color:
http://www.cetam.fr/site/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/Saharienne-e815a.jpg from http://cetam.fr/site/2010/07/24/sauvegarde-de-labeille-saharienne/

Saharan bees might even vary in band thickness within the same population, or the ones I am seeing in photos are hybridized with Carnica or Italian bees:





Nâama : Nécessité d’adopter des moyens modernes pour préserver l’abeille saharienne |







lecourrier-dalgerie.com





Biskra, Algeria:





Log into Facebook


Log into Facebook to start sharing and connecting with your friends, family, and people you know.




www.facebook.com










Log into Facebook


Log into Facebook to start sharing and connecting with your friends, family, and people you know.




www.facebook.com










Log into Facebook


Log into Facebook to start sharing and connecting with your friends, family, and people you know.




www.facebook.com


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

I found bees from Laghouat (?) that have the similar narrow abdomen like our common Tunisian like bees. Though they might actually be a black strain of Saharan bee because the Saharan bee has a larger range than people previously thought:


https://www.aps.dz/regions/115689-developpement-de-la-production-de-miel-dans-les-regions-steppiques-et-sahariennes



Bees in France (?) similar to our Tunisian like bees?:
https://mag.farmitoo.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Capture-d’écran-2018-05-07-à-16.02.09.png from https://mag.farmitoo.com/fr/2018/05/25/happyculteur/

Carnica or German black bees? Loira, France:








Les abeilles de la Loire ont le moral - 42info.fr







42info.fr


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Here is a video from Algiers Province that should be Tunisian bees, but there are some light colored bees mixed in. Maybe there are lighter colored strains of Tunisian bees or they are hybridized with Italian bee imports?





Edit:
Bees from Setif, Algeria. Apis melllifera intermissa or sahariensis?









 (Dark thoracic haired drones)

Mascara, Algeria:





Batna, Algeria:


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Apis mellifera sahariensis from Illizi:





Edit:

From Algeria. Could this be Apis mellifera sahariensis? The abdomens are narrow like A. m. intermissa:


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Saharan bees from southern Morocco:


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Saharan bees from southern Morocco look very similar to our common bees here in North Carolina. The southern Morocco bees might be the dominant bee in our colonies here in North Carolina. They are solid colored, with broader abdomens and can have thick bands of hair. I am even wondering whether our thicker banded, light colored colonies are Saharan bees, too.

Southern Morocco bees:




















Light colored southern Morocco bees:





One of our colonies that look similar:
November Light colored colony (Saharan?)
20211112 000439
Photos of the colony:





Facebook







www.facebook.com









Facebook







www.facebook.com









Facebook







www.facebook.com









Facebook







www.facebook.com









Facebook







www.facebook.com









Facebook







www.facebook.com





More of our colonies that are like the Saharan bee:
Colony #1
November 17 2021
November 17th
November 17th

Colony #2
The Cape like bees (probably not though)
The Cape like bees (probably not though)

Thicker banded bee colony that could be Saharan:
November (Thick banded, light colored bees)

Thick banded, aggressive light colored colony (Saharan?):
20210921 000103 04

This is the colony that I thought could be German black bees, but now I think they are mostly Saharan with maybe something else to cause discoidal shift to go towards zero.
20211028 001004


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

HaplozygousNut said:


> The bees that I thought might have Saharan genetics in them look similar to the Persian bees (Apis mellifera meda) in Iraq:
> Another video of them:
> 
> 
> ...


Persian or Saharan or Golden Tunisian like bees in South Carolina (narrow abdomens).


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Saharan bees are said to have large drones:


https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=651676988507244&id=100009948450657&m_entstream_source=timeline



Saharan bee video:


https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=664112163930393&id=100009948450657&m_entstream_source=timeline


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

HaplozygousNut said:


> The person who made that video of black colored bees is from Kiev, Ukraine. I looked up in Ukrainian with google translate "honeybees" and found a dark thorax haired drone on facebook. Facebook
> German black bees are at the northern tip of Ukraine, but most of Ukraine is Carnica or Sossimai (strain of Carnica?). Figure 1-Distribution of the various subspecies of the European honey... (https://f9esw7naqqlx7ckf3nldwtppv2v...ds/2018/12/rasy-medonosnyh-pchel-v-evrope.jpg from https://www.paseka.in.ua/en/ukrainskaja-stepnaja-poroda-pchel/)
> Another photo with workers that have darker or dull thoracic hairs like German black bees do Facebook
> 
> ...


Ukraine is a hybridization zone of A. m. mellifera and the C lineage (A. m. carnica?). 





Apis mellifera mellifera in eastern Europe – morphometric variation and determination of its range limits | Apidologie


Apidologie, A Quality Journal in Bee Science




www.apidologie.org





*"The variability of Apis mellifera mellifera in Eastern Europe was investigated with a morphometric analysis of 136 samples from Poland, Belarus and the Ukraine. Samples from the northern part of this area were unambiguously classified as A. m. mellifera, but the proportion of uncertain allocations increased towards the south, where some samples were classified as hybrids between A. m. mellifera and subspecies of the lineages C and O. In the Ukraine, one third of the samples were classified as A. m. mellifera, one third as A. m. macedonica, and one third as hybrids. Our results confirm earlier reports of a large hybrid zone in Poland and the Ukraine, but they unexpectedly also show a strong influence of the morphological O lineage. However, the true extension of this hybrid zone currently remains unknown. The bees of northeastern Belarus showed an extreme position on the border of the A. m. mellifera cluster, potentially indicating ecotypic variation within A. m. mellifera in the northeast of its range. "*

The A. m. sossimai could be a hybrid subspecies of M and C lineage in Ukraine. And A. m. iberiensis a hybrid subspecies of M and A lineage in Spain.


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

HaplozygousNut said:


> The Apis mellifera jemenitica in the Middle East could be a different subspecies or lineage (the "Y" lineage was discovered in East Africa, not Middle East) from the Apis mellifera jemenitica in Africa. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.3896/IBRA.1.52.3.03
> 
> Quote from page 129:
> _*"The genetic relationship between African and Arabian Peninsula Apis mellifera jemenitica populations, and their relationships to other surrounding subspecies have not been conclusively addressed. The available mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) studies indicate that several different mtDNA haplotypes are found in populations referred to as Apis mellifera jemenitica. Ethiopian samples referred to as Apis mellifera jemenitica (n = 16 colonies from 3 sites) were reported to possess a new mitochondrial lineage ―Y‖ which differs from the ―O‖ lineage of Near East Asia and ―A‖ lineage of Africa (Franck et al., 2001). The honey bees of Sudan are classified as Apis mellifera jemenitica based on morphometrics (Ruttner, 1988), but mtDNA analysis did not confirm the presence of ―Y‖ lineage (El-Niweiri and Moritz, 2008). Likewise, preliminary studies of A. m. jemenitica from Saudi Arabia (8 colonies) and Yemen (Socotra Island, 7 colonies) revealed the presence of O and A lineage haplotypes, but did not detect any Y lineage mitochondrial sequences (Smith, unpublished data). These results are consistent with the contention of Meixner et al. (2011) that A. m. simensis of Ethiopia is distinct from A. m. jemenitica. This situation seems analogous to that of A. m. monticola. Apis mellifera populations in different high mountain areas of Africa have been grouped together as Apis mellifera monticola on the basis of morphometric similarity (Meixner et al., 1989); this suggested that these were relicts of a once larger population that occupied lower elevations at times when the climate was cooler. However, a later mtDNA study (Hepburn et al., 2000) did not support the idea of a monophyletic group of relictual populations occupying an archipelago of high altitude habitat islands. On the basis of mtDNA evidence, they concluded that the populations on different mountains should be regarded as ecotypically differentiated populations, each derived from the populations surrounding their particular mountain and convergent on morphology adapted to high altitude habitats (Hepburn and Radloff, 1998). A similar situation may pertain to A. m. jemenitica. The morphometrically similar African and Asian populations currently called ―Apis mellifera jemenitica‖ could comprise a single monophyletic lineage, adapted to hot, arid conditions. Alternatively, A. m. jemenitica could comprise several different, genetically distinct populations that differentiated from their respective neighbouring populations and converged on similar physical characteristics along with adaptation to similar hot arid habitats. These populations might also experience gene flow from other neighbouring populations, leading to the introduction and spread of mtDNA haplotypes characteristic of their neighbours. In this regard Franck et al. (2001) particularly suggested the importance of surveying microsatellites or other nuclear markers of the honey bee subspecies from Eastern Africa and the Middle East, to better understand their phylogeography. The African and Asian Apis mellifera jemenitica have been geographically isolated from one another for several thousands of years, and the occurrence of independent evolutionary changes as a result of long-term geographical isolation has been well stated (Avise et al., 1987; Smith 1991a, 1991b; Smith 2002). The newly described A. m. simensis in Ethiopia indicates that much additional survey of African and Arabian populations is needed before the diversity and distribution of A. m. jemenitica can be described with certainty "*_
> ...


More about the Y lineage:








Mitochondrial genomes illuminate the evolutionary history of the Western honey bee (Apis mellifera) - Scientific Reports


Western honey bees (Apis mellifera) are one of the most important pollinators of agricultural crops and wild plants. Despite the growth in the availability of sequence data for honey bees, the phylogeny of the species remains a subject of controversy. Most notably, the geographic origin of honey...




www.nature.com




_*" Honey bees from Ethiopia deviate substantially from the A lineage into which they have been originally placed and were thus referred to a distinct group of their own, the Y lineage44. A sixth lineage from Syria and Lebanon has been identified as clearly divergent from the O lineage based on neighbour joining of microsatellite loci and mitochondrial DNA45,46. Here we refer to this proposed group as the S lineage. Moreover, some studies do not recognise the distinction between the C and O lineages21,38,47. 

Aside from the four traditional morphological groups, molecular studies have suggested the existence of at least two additional lineages. The Y lineage has been recognised as a distinctive grouping of honey bees from Ethiopia based on parsimony analyses of microsatellite markers and mitochondrial DNA44. The distinctiveness of Ethiopian bees, traditionally placed within the A lineage, has further been demonstrated by pheromone76 and morphometric analyses77,78, although the latter also found a high degree of introgression between Ethiopian populations and the neighbouring well-defined African subspecies. We found a close proximity between the Ethiopian A. m. simensis and part of the paraphyletic A lineage, clearly separating it from the geographically close O lineage. These results are in line with the ML analysis of Cridland et al.23. The phylogenetic position of A. m. simensis was poorly supported or not supported all in our CAT-GTR + G analyses. Therefore, the validity of A. m. simensis as a separate lineage cannot be rejected at present but is contingent upon future validation. "*_


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Sicilian black bees look like Tunisian bees, too. Brother Adam said that A. m. sicula was smaller than A. m. intermissa.









 (A. m. ligustica mixture from the light coloration in a few workers?)


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Thicker banded strain of German black bee (Apis mellifera mellifera) in Corsica:


corsica bees - Google Search



Just south of Corsica there is Sardinia where Italian bees (Apis mellifera ligustica) are native.

Thicker banded German black bees from Corsica?:


corsica bees - Google Search











Sauvegarde des abeilles en Corse - 10 €


Miel du maquis corse Participez activement à la sauvegarde des abeilles en Corse Réservez votre ruche pour 10€ par mois et recevez 16 a 20 pots de miel de 500grs par an de votre ruche. Printemps, châtaignier ,arbousier,miellat. Avec un suivi mensuel par mail de votre ruche. E




www.toutvendre.fr





People could easily confuse the thicker banded German black bees from Corsica as Carniolan bees. Assuming the bees in this photo are pure (I see a light colored worker, possibly from hybridization with Italian bees):
http://mieldecorse.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/DSCN2119-bis.jpg (image from here Une île, une abeille - Miel de Corse - Mele di Corsica)

Apiculture et miel Quote translated from French:
_*"The Corsican bee (apis mellifera mellifera) or black bee is a subspecies of the European honey bee (apis mellifera). It is specific to the island and has been protected since 1982 by a decree prohibiting any introduction of bees on the island. It is small in size, with a longer tongue, rather short hairs and a higher cubital index than the honeybee."*_


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

HaplozygousNut said:


> There are some "M" lineage population in northern Algeria? C lineage, too?
> 
> Maltese bees are said to be wider abdomen than even German black bees!
> Quote form this website about Maltese bees: https://www.melitabees.com/black-queens.html#/
> *"The honey bees of Malta are similar in size to A m Sicula and A m Intermissa, but have shorter legs and wings; the wings are also much narrower. The abdomen of the bees found in Malta is considerably wider (ster- num index [SI] = 77.74) than in its relative, A m intermissa (81.52). Thus, A m ruttneri is the ’broadest’ subspecies of A mellifera, even broader than A m mellifera (SI = 78.61) (Ruttner 1992). While the pigmentation of the bees does not differ much from A m intermissa or A m sicula, they have considerably longer hair on the abdomen. Whereas the cubital distances of A m ruttneri differ greatly from A m sicula and A m intermissa, the cubital index is similar to A m sicula, but different from A m intermissa. "*


Videos of Maltese bees that look similar to German black bees:















Light colored bees mixed with dark. Are these not pure, but hybrids of Apis mellifera ruttneri?:





There hasn't been any imports of Maltese bees into the United States before, right?


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## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

Those are some dark bees!


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Yes, indeed they are very black! Here are videos of several different subspecies of very dark bees to compare. They are all similar looking:
*
Sicilian black bee (Apis mellifera siciliana):*





*Maltese bee (Apis mellifera ruttneri):*





*Tunisian bee (Apis mellifera intermissa):*





*German black bee (Apis mellifera mellifera):*




*
Spanish black bee (Apis mellifera iberiensis) Valid subspecies?:*





*Portuguese bee* is a New Subspecies? I don't have a good video of Portuguese bees from northern Portugal where the new sublineage of the African lineage is common. But I found one video of bees in Portugal:








Apicultura em Portugal - Beekeeping in Portugal







www.youtube.com





Bees from middle of Portugal (Vale da Feiteira)?:
Apicultura - Inspecções o que ver? (Skip to 2:50 in video to see the bees)


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

*Malagasy bees (Apis mellifera unicolor): *




 (Skip to 0:13 in the video to see the bees)


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Dark thoracic haired drones for Saharan bees? (dark drone at 3:02 on the bottom of the frame)


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

HaplozygousNut said:


> I think that there could be several different subspecies competing against each other in America where it is a hybridization area by somehow breeding to their own kind in mating flights or inside the hive (selecting for their own genetically related queens to hatch). So that there are multiple strains of honeybees in one habitat/climate area going through adaptation or a little evolution independent from each other.
> 
> But if the bees do not have the ability to maintain purity of their subspecies in America where it is a melting pot of subspecies, then isolation is probably important for the progress of adaptation of micro-evolution. If commercial Italian queens from another climate keep getting imported and mix in with the adapting local bees, then the local bees may be slowed down in their adaptation race. First they mix to become a adaptive mixture of subspecies, then gradually become their own subspecies?


Even if our bees in America are populations of adaptive mixtures of different subspecies right now, maybe the different bee subspecies will eventually purify themselves of foreign subspecies genes and each subspecies dominate a certain habitat range in America.

There was interbreeding with the two human subspecies H. sapiens sapiens and H. sapiens neanderthalensis in the past. The genetic difference between Neanderthals and Modern Humans is less than the genetic difference between the different subspecies of chimpanzees.

It could be that genes of Neanderthals have been culled out of our H. sapiens sapiens subspecies today. If this is so, then something similar might happen to our honeybee subspecies here in America.

_*"It is thought that Neanderthal genes which contributed to the present day human genome stemmed from interbreeding in the Near East rather than the entirety of Europe. However, interbreeding still occurred without contributing to the modern genome. [97] The approximately 40,000 year old modern human Oase 2 was found, in 2015, to have had 6–9% (point estimate 7.3%) Neanderthal DNA, indicating a Neanderthal ancestor up to four to six generations earlier, but this hybrid population does not appear to have made a substantial contribution to the genomes of later Europeans.[371]"*_
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal#Interbreeding_with_modern_humans)

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interbreeding_between_archaic_and_modern_humans#Introgressed_genome) 
_*" In all, about 20% of distinctly Neanderthal gene variants survive today.[91] Although many of the gene variants inherited from Neanderthals may have been detrimental and selected out,[79] Neanderthal introgression appears to have affected the modern human immune system,[92][93][94][95] and is also implicated in several other biological functions and structures,[96] but a large portion appears to be non-coding DNA.[97] " *_* (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal)*

I am wondering whether the Neanderthal genes that do code for things may have been particularly beneficial genes that were stolen. 

_*"Such low percentages of Neanderthal DNA in all present day populations indicate infrequent past interbreeding,[380] unless interbreeding was more common with a different population of modern humans which did not contribute to the present day gene pool.[97] Of the inherited Neanderthal genome, 25% in modern Europeans and 32% in modern East Asians may be related to viral immunity.[381]"*_
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal#Interbreeding_with_modern_humans)

There are other human subspecies or races that interbred with us in the past. Denisovans were archaic humans closely related to Neanderthals:
_*"A haplotype of EPAS1 in modern Tibetans, which allows them to live at high elevations in a low-oxygen environment, likely came from Denisovans."

"Denisovan genes may have conferred a degree of immunity against the G614 mutation of SARS-CoV-2.[64] "*_

Denisovan genes might have survived on islands better than on the continents:
_*" Icelanders also have an anomalously high Denisovan heritage, which could have stemmed from a Denisovan population far west of the Altai mountains. Genetic data suggests Neanderthals were frequently making long crossings between Europe and the Altai mountains especially towards the date of their extinction. " *_(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denisovan#Demographics)

_*"A 2011 study found that Denisovan DNA is prevalent in Aboriginal Australians, Near Oceanians, Polynesians, Fijians, Eastern Indonesians and Mamanwans (from the Philippines); but not in East Asians, western Indonesians, Jahai people (from Malaysia) or Onge (from the Andaman Islands). This means that Denisovan introgression occurred within the Pacific region rather than on the Asian mainland, and that ancestors of the latter groups were not present in Southeast Asia at the time, which in turn means that eastern Asia was settled by modern humans in two distinct migrations.[35]"*_ 
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denisovan#Modern_humans)


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## AR1 (Feb 5, 2017)

Haplo, thought you might like this paper:









Genetic past, present, and future of the honey bee (Apis mellifera) in the United States of America - Apidologie


Humans have domesticated hundreds of animal and plant species for thousands of years. Artwork, archeological finds, recorded accounts, and other primary sources can provide glimpses into the historic management practices used over the course of a given species’ domestication history. Pairing...




link.springer.com


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

AR1 said:


> Haplo, thought you might like this paper:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Thank you for the link. But I already saw this article months ago and printed it out for me to read at home!


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

HaplozygousNut said:


> Even if our bees in America are populations of adaptive mixtures of different subspecies right now, maybe the different bee subspecies will eventually purify themselves of foreign subspecies genes and each subspecies dominate a certain habitat range in America.
> 
> There was interbreeding with the two human subspecies H. sapiens sapiens and H. sapiens neanderthalensis in the past. The genetic difference between Neanderthals and Modern Humans is less than the genetic difference between the different subspecies of chimpanzees.
> 
> ---------------------------------


I cannot find where I read this about the difference between Neanderthals and Modern Humans being less than the genetic difference between the different chimpanzee subspecies. It is possible that I misread it, so I am looking for where I read it. It is still debated whether Neanderthals are a distinct species from Modern Humans or just a subspecies of Modern Humans I read on Wikipedia.

Here I found an article about the 500 or so Lake Victorian cichlid species coming from just a few species within 15000 years! That is incredibly fast. Ancient hookups between different species may explain Lake Victoria's stunning diversity of fish

So I guess the non-native honeybees imported to the United States can change into new subspecies within a short time. The article of the Lake Victorian cichlids becoming new species quickly, says that hybridizing may have helped to get those new species so quickly.


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