Honeybees are native to Africa and Europe but have been spread worldwide
as the basis for an apicultural industry. To date, large and diverse wild
populations only remain in Africa.

We estimate the number of wild colonies in Africa to be 310 million
colonies, whereas there are only around 11.5 million colonies in Europe.
In other words, beekeeping in Africa uses a small part of the wild
population, whereas in Europe wild populations play a small role in
determining population structure that mainly results from beekeeping
activities (i.e. translocations and selections).

Most honeybee diseases are present in Africa, without large scale
deleterious effects. Indeed,African bees are resistant or adapted to most
common parasites and no epidemics have been reported.

The factors that contribute to this probably include beekeeping management
(small vs. large scale), absence of breeding, high genetic diversity and
presence of a large wild stock population, less migration, less harvest,
less stress that allow honeybees to defend themselves against parasites
and diseases.


-- 
Is there a need for conservation of honeybees in Africa?
Vincent Dietemann
Apidologie 40 (2009) 285–295

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned 
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html