> Colony Size, Rather Than Geographic Origin of Stocks, Predicts Overwintering Success in Honey Bees. Mehmet Ali Döke, Carley M. McGrady,  Mark Otieno,  Christina M. Grozinger, and Maryann Frazier.  (2019). Journal of Economic Entomology, 112(2), 525-533.

The above title of the paper can be misleading if the paper (attached) is not read.  

"Geographic Origin" is simply the location of the queen/package producer.  No mention is made that any of the colonies tested had any carni lineage at all, and from the text, one can conclude that the paper was simply debunking the oft-debunked claim that bees can be "locally adapted", when the same bees can thrive anywhere from the equator to 50 degrees North:

"Breeder South 1 (FL) has been using Pol-line hygienic Italian (a name given to this stock by the commercial provider) queens bred for Varroa Sensitive Hygiene (VSH) behavior
(Danka et al. 2016) with an outcrossing mating system since 2011. Breeder North1 (VT) has been selecting their own stock for local success (i.e., survival and productivity) which started from VSH queens purchased in 2004 with limited and sparse introductions from other regional beekeepers’ stocks. Breeder North2 (WV) is a member of the Russian Honeybee Breeders Association (RHBA) and has been strictly using queens from the Russian stock since 2003. Both the Pol-line and ARS Russian Bee stocks were developed through selective breeding programs at USDA-ARS Honey Bee Breeding, Genetics and Physiology Laboratory in Baton Rouge, LA (Rinderer et al. 2000; Danka et al. 2016). We could not obtain information on breeding practices of breeder South 2 (TX). We investigated the genetic differentiation of the honey bee stocks used in this study through microsatellite analysis (see Microsatellite Genotyping below)."

Further, there was not a lot of genetic variation here between the known " hygienic Italian" and the other bees in the study, verifying that this paper compared "apples to apples", Italian-based hybrids from one fellow in on place vs another from another:

"The three G-Statistics revealed that overall estimates of genetic differentiation among stocks were small and not significant....  The difference between
Northern and Southern regions was significant but small, accounting for 1.73% of the overall genetic variation (ϕRT = 0.017, P = 0.01; Table 1)"

To emphasize here, ya get what ya pay for, and if you buy "locally adapted", you are paying for magic beans, as opposed to an actual line of bees bred for specific written-down traits, and assured via things like AI breeder queens.

Carnis rock.




 

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