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Looking for "the best bee" - An experiment about interactions between origin and environment of honey bee strains in Europe
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Edité par CCSD ; Dadant & Sons Inc -
International audience. The honey bee Apis mellifera, of which there are currently 28 identified subspecies and numerous ecotypes, have been evolving and adapting to a wide range of environments for hundreds of thousands of years within their native range of Europe, Africa and Asia. Honey bees have been widely dispersed over the past several hundred years and are now also established in the Americas and Australia. Today, the high loss of colonies worldwide is attributed to a combination of factors, including parasitic mites, pathogens, pesticides and malnutrition. The COLOSS network of European scientists asks the questions: Does beekeeper selection for productivity lead to genetic deficiency, and are locally adapted populations being displaced by the movement of various honey bee types to locations beyond their native range? A major research effort explores these questions, looking at numerous types of honey bees that are endemic to specific areas of Europe or have become adapted after several decades of breeding. Beekeepers in the U.S. also consider these questions through interest in locally adapted bees and “survivor” feral bees, although the situation is very different. Our honey bees are not native and were derived from relatively small founder populations, thus we lack the evolutionary diversity of subspecies and ecotypes that exist in Europe. We also lack the strong support of institutions and beekeeper organizations devoted to the selection and maintenance of specific subspecies, as established in many European countries. Feral populations in the U.S., previously considered a mixed source of raw genetic variation, have been devastated by the impact of Varroa mites. Through semen collections from Old World sources, Washington State University has been involved in the importation and distribution of additional honey bee genetic diversity in the U.S. Associated with the importations, cryopreserved germplasm from “pure” Old World subspecies has been deposited in the WSU Germplasm Repository for future breeding and conservation needs.Through such measures, we hope to enhance domestic bee breeding programs by providing additional genetic diversity to improve bee health in the U.S.
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