IBRA special edition on native bees in Europe May 2014

[Jon]

At the colony level, genetic diversity is essential to colony health (Tarpy, 2003; Seeley and Tarpy, 2007) and fitness (Page, 1980; Mattila and Seeley, 2007; Oldroyd and Fewell, 2007). Admixture may lead to increased genetic diversity, yet it may also compromise local adaptations by disrupting co-evolved gene complexes fine-tuned by natural selection over evolutionary time (De la Rúa et al ., 2013). Accordingly, native honey bee subspecies represent reservoirs of unique combinations of genes and adaptations to local conditions that must be preserved and passed on to future generations of beekeepers.

http://www.ibra.org.uk/articles/Diversity-of-protected-A-m-mellifera

Andrew Abrahams provided some of the bees for this Europe wide study and his were the purest Amm which is good to know.
Irish bees were not part of the study but I would hazard a guess that the Galtee stock is very pure.

There are about 10 open access papers in this IBRA special edition.

http://www.ibra.org.uk/articles/JAR-53-2-2014

Great to see some peer reviewed science on the native bees of Europe as opposed to the Beowulf Cooper folklore.

Norman Carreck gives an overview of this special edition of JAR in the current edition of Bee World.

[busybeephilip]

Jon
There was some work done on the mt haplotype for the Galtee stock many years ago, I think it was a variation of M4

[Jon]

That is in the Jensen and Pedersen paper which is cited in the paper I referenced above.
It is on the GBBG website and the NIHBS website.

Some of this stuff looks to be much more detailed in terms of looking at introgression of genetic material from various subspecies.

[Adam]

I haven't had time to study the papers but this is an abstract of one of them...

" ...... and the support of local breeding activities must be prioritised in order to prevent colony losses, to optimize a sustainable productivity and to enable a continuous adaptation to environmental changes...."

Music to your ears Jon.

[Bridget]

Music to Drumgerry's ears as well. Pity I can't tag him!


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[Jon]

Stirring up the genepool with constant imports is a disaster.
It is hardly rocket science to think that the British Isles Native bee has become better adapted to our conditions than other subspecies through natural selection over the last few thousand years.

[drumgerry]

Music indeed! I get confused about Facebook and forums as well!

Not to get (too) political about it but it's my fervent hope that if there's a yes vote in September we can push the Scottish government in this direction - that quote by Adam would be a good starting place in my opinion.