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From:
randy oliver <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Fri, 25 Mar 2016 07:39:09 -0700
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>
> >New work in Australia, where there is a large population of feral bees,
> shows that their genetic make-up is pretty much the same as "domestic" bees
>

Reading the paper (and looking at the figures), I wouldn't necessarily come
to that conclusion; neither did the authors:

"It is noteworthy that these [A.m.m.] alleles have persisted in the feral
population despite continuous input of Eastern European lineage alleles
from the commercial population for more than 100 years. This may suggest
that the feral population is largely independent of the commercial
population—as has previously been noted in Western Australia (Chapman et
al. 2008)."

I also suspect that a number of Australian beekeepers may weigh in on the
clear differences between preferred domestic stocks, as compared to the
dark ferals.

The analysis of these bees was for nuclear DNA, which one would assume to
be well-homogenized due to honey bee mating behavior.  I'd be very
interested to see mitochondrial DNA analysis, which would track mother
lines, and could be compared to Magnus and Szalanski's data from the U.S.

Also of considerable interest is why the African lines did not predominate
in the feral population of Australia, which to my eye, appears to be highly
favorable for Africanized bees.  Perhaps the Africans simply could not out
compete the closely-related A.m.m's.

-- 
Randy Oliver
Grass Valley, CA
www.ScientificBeekeeping.com

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