While in Australia I imported some of the KI Ligurians to my Melbourne apiary, about 10 years ago, as a trial. They looked the part but did not perform as well as some other strains under my local conditions. At the time it was widely known that these weren't 'pure' Ligurians despite KI being a bee sanctuary, however that doesn't negate the efforts put in by KI breeders and beekeepers to develop a distinct and locally adapted type which was evidently selected to appear very similar to a true Ligurian and did well on KI.

I'm reminded of the current situation in the UK where some beekeepers put great store on their bees looking (superficially) like A. mellifera mellifera in the belief that it gives them some special desirable characteristics. Putting aside the observation that many of these dark(ish) bees don't often appear to my eye to be like A. m. m., we are back to selecting bees by appearance rather than either performance or true genetics. To me, these are just 'fancy' bees in the way that show breeds as, say, cats or pigeons are selected.

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