> Humans have been keeping honey bees, Apis mellifera, in artificial hives for over 7000 years. Long enough, one might imagine, for some genetic changes to have occurred in domestic bees that would distinguish them from their wild ancestors. Indeed, some have argued that the recent mysterious and widespread losses of commercial bee colonies, are due in part to inbreeding. 

> Harpur et al. (2012) show that the domestication of honey bees, rather than reducing genetic variance in the population, has increased it. It seems that the commercial honey bees of Canada are a mongrel lot, with far more variability than their ancestors in Europe.

> Harpur et al. (2012) show low FIS and genetic admixture for the managed Canadian and French populations they studied. It therefore seems to me that reduced genetic diversity is unlikely to be contributing to CCD (or if CCD exists at all -- but that is another story).

Domestication of honey bees was associ- ated with expansion of genetic diversity
BENJAMIN P. OLDROYD Molecular Ecology (2012) 21, 4409–4411

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