Dave writes:
bzzt.  Sorry wrong door
Bro Adam said "Macedonia" -- northern Greek
I agree

Well, my source was a Russian beekeeper, not to dispute Bro Adam. I
think his detailed response is interesting:

From: "Viacheslav Sheveliov" <[log in to unmask]>
Newsgroups: sci.agriculture.beekeeping
Subject: Re: Russian bees
Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2001

Hi! Sorry for delayed response, I have many work.

Far Eastern bees was not included in state program of bee zoning in
Soviet times, so no breeding work have been done and was no breeding
apiaries offering genuine Far Eastern bees/queens. According to state
zoning program, central Russian strain was designed for Far East.
Still there are discussions about origin of Far Eastern bees. Most
researchers agreed that they are originated mostly from Ukrainian bees
(Apis mellifera acervorum).

In Primorsky region in mid 19-th century was settled with many
Ukrainians, and still there are areas in Primorsky region populated
mostly with Ukrainians. So, among Far Eastern bees there are families
most relative to Ukrainian bees and ones relative to Russian bees
(Apis mellifera mellifera). Russian bees are very aggressive,
Ukrainian are less, so bees described by Steve seems are more relative
to Russian bees or they are pure central Russian bees.  OK, I stop my
amateur reasoning and give citation from serious book


Bilash G.D., Krivtsov N.I. Breeding of honey bees
Moscow, Agropromizdat, 1991 - 304 pp.
ISBN 5-10-001701-5  Pages 83-85

Far Eastern Bees.

Those bees can and should be classified as primitive strain, however
officially they are not accepted as a strain, despite there are no any
serious reason against such decision. They populate territory of
Chitinsky, Amursky, Khabarovsky and Primorsky regions, where Far
Eastern bee  formed as primitive strain from the end of 19th century
till present times as result of excursive crosses of bees introduced
by frontiersmen mostly of Ukrainian strain, less - central Russian
strain, lesser - yellow and gray Caucasian strain and much lesser -
Italian strain, and also as result of natural and artificial
selection.

As result of heterogeneous origin Far Eastern bees differ from other
strains by greater amplitude of variability, however according main
characteristics quite answer to conditions of primitive strain (array
of specific features, their stabile inheritance from generation to
generation, great number of families, which exclude probability of
relative crosses in big scale and so on).

V.V. Stasevich (1913), known specialist of Far Eastern bee-keeping,
considered that Far Eastern bees are product of successful combination
of central Russian and Ukrainian bees in conditions of Primorsky
region.  V. Grudnov (1913) reported, that in Amursky region settlers
introduced central Russian bees from Altay, from Perm and Voronezh
regions, Ukrainian bees - from Poltava region, and Caucasian bees
(most probably, yellow ones) - from northern Caucasus. Caucasian bees
badly hibernated here, they was very swarmed (up to 4 swarms, and
sometimes 7-8 swarms per family during summer), but was outstanding by
honey production.

Far Eastern bees quite prune to swarming, but remarkably less than
central Russian bees. Before main honey production time up to 50% of
families can be in swarm conditions, best way to reduce it is forming
of splits. Number of queen cells is differ from 4 to 150, as a rule,
gray bees builds less queen cells and less prune to swarming than
yellow ones.

* * *

If you are still reading, I will mention that Apis mellifera
acervorum, the Ukraine bee, is not a generally accepted honey bee
subspecies. Naturally, it is in the Ukraine. The whole issue of honey
bee subspecies, at least outside of their native ranges, is probably a
non-starter

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