> Ruttner classified the Primorsky area bee as A.m.macedonica in 1988.
> Tom Rinderer sent Ruttner samples of the queens he was importing and
> Ruttner verified macedonica. The Primorsky bee is made up of races not
> seen in the U.S. EXCEPT for a *very small* percent of Italian &
> carniolan in *some* samples.
From Russian sources.
First bees to far east was exported 1870 from Odessa with steamships.
Following much larger sending came from different parts of Ukraine
and central Russia. Between 1880 and 1890. Al bee races mixed with
each other without some control. Important influence on the "mixture"
had big volumes of gray caucasica during 1930 (Professor A.I. Ganajev
1965). Far east bees are a mixture of bees from Ukraine (acervorum?),
mellifera, caucasica and ligustica.
Already 1930 was observed resistance against AFB.
For studying of Primorsk bees a National bee breeding station opened
1962
1971 some tests were made on bees from the north part of the country
(Chabarovsk area) and results were as good as mellifera bees and
nature conservancy reserve was established.
Year 1969 made prof J. I. Makarov a morphological inventory check
with following results.
Min/max values; average; S% ; S%*M = s
Tongue length, mm 6,10 - 6,80; 6,4; 2,0; 0,128
Length of the 3:th tergite, mm 2,00 - 2,33; 2,16; 4,0; 0,0864
Width of the 3:th tergite, mm 4,60 - 5,35; 4,91; 3,0; 0,1473
Length of the wax plate, mm 1,33 - 1,80; 1,58; 6,0; 0,0948
Width of the wax plate, mm 2,20 - 2,68; 2,41; 3,1; 0,07471
Length of the wing, mm 8,86 - 9,76; 9,2; 1,6; 0,1472
Width of the wing, mm 2,93 - 3,46; 3,15; 4,3; 0,13545
Tarsus index 1,57 - 1,94; 1,76; 5,0; 0,088
Cubital index 1,66 - 3,61; 2,28; 14,0; 0,3192
American scientists worked out a hypothesis that bees in far east was
the first bees exposed to varroa and could developed a resistance to
varroa.
The russian point of view is that because the first bees was exported
to the far east 130 years ago and varroa was discovered there 50
years ago, so from the evolutionary point of view - a very short
time- a spontaneous selection could hardly arise.
The local bee research institute of the Russian Scientific Academy
tested bees in Primorsk and find that Primorsk bees are not better
than other bee races and they are not able to survive varroa and
other diseases.
------------------------
When talking about macedonica. One should observe what dr. A.
Komissar (Department of Apiculture, National Agricultural University,
Kyiv, Ukraine) said in St. Petersburg (Conference about social
insects) this year:
"F. Ruttner (1988) separated new race of honeybees Apis mellifera
macedonica from the large body of central European bees A. m.
carnica. These bees live in the Northern Greece, Bulgaria, Romania
and (maybe) part of the former USSR. National bee scientists didn't
recognize the Ruttner's hypothesis: the Bulgarians believe that they
have aboriginal Bulgarian bees A. m. rodopica (Petrov, 1993), the
Romanians think, that they have aboriginal A. m. carpatica (Foti et
al, 1965), Ukrainians recognize aboriginal A. m. acervorum (new name
is A.m. sossimai Engel, 1999). But from the scientific point of view
the coincidence of the country borders and limits of the race
distribution isn't possible.
F. Ruttner (1988, page 250) found very strange fact of the acute
coincidence of the border of distribution of Bulgarian and Turkey
honey bees with the frontier between these countries and he noticed:
"An explanation for this observation is very hard to give". We
noticed also, that the Macedonian bees are distributed in the
countries with Orthodox Church only.
Our analysis of the facts of European history and distribution of the
honeybee races gave the basement for conclusions about the mutual
influence of social bees, main religions and life of human nations.
These conclusions can be formulated as follows:
The distribution of the different aboriginal honeybee races in Europe
coincides with the distribution of main religions. The Italian (Apis
mellifera ligustica) and Carniolian (A. m. carnica) bees are
distributed in catholic countries; macedonian bees (A. m. macedonica,
Ruttner, 1988) live in the countries with orthodox religion, and dark
forest bees (A. m. mellifera) are incompatible with Catholicism. The
hybrid honeybee races are in use in Protestant countries usually.
It doesn't exist any honeybee race, which would be naturally
distributed simultaneously in Christian and Moslem countries
(exclusion is small Albania).
The human population has life problems in the near-border regions,
where main religion and honeybee race don't correspond to one another
and the system "main religion-honeybee race" is moving to the
necessary balance.
Is it possible to formulate the following consequence, which will be
important for beekeepers and bee scientists: the introduction of
foreign bee races to the regions with inappropriate religion can't be
successful. There are several examples, which support this statement.
On the our opinion the possibility of the reverse influence the bee
races on the human life can't be excluded - maybe the use of
appropriate races can harmonize the life of humans.
The above hypothesis is outside of scientific understanding of the
world, but the religion is outside of it also. The strange link of
coincidences of the events in the life of nations and social bees
don't permit to leave this hypothesis outside of our attention."
Olda Vancata
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