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
The commercial and feral populations of
Australia carry a similar (low) proportion of alleles
from the African lineage (3.83 versus
3.97 %). The commercial population carries more
Eastern European alleles (69.36 versus 57.39 %)
and fewerWestern European alleles (26.81 versus
38.64 %) than the feral population, although the
difference in ancestry proportions from the three
lineages between the two populations was
_not statistically significant_.
For the first time, we found a genetic signature
associated with reference samples from Africa in
Australia. The historical record suggests that there
were a small number of introductions of bees from
North Africa to Australia in the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries
Hybrid origins of Australian honeybees (Apis mellifera)
Apidologie (2016) 47:26–34
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