The great similarity between bees on both sides of the Strait of
Gibraltar was noted by Brother Adam (1983). He speculated that bees
spread from Africa to Europe through this route. Hepburn (1998)
writes that the European and African lines all originated in the east
and have been separate for a very long time, -- but that some
hybridization between the two may have occurred in Spain. The bees in
the northern part of Africa are physically isolated from the rest of
Africa by the Sahara desert, so their relationship is probably quite
distant. Many of these migrations probably took place when climate
and geography was quite different than it is now.

from Genetic diversity of the honeybee in Africa, P. Franck, et al.
(Heredity, Volume 86 Issue 4 ) E-mail:
<mailto:[log in to unmask]>[log in to unmask]


>A total of 738 colonies from 64 localities along the African
>continent have been analysed using the DraI RFLP of the COI-COII
>mitochondrial region. Mitochondrial DNA of African honeybees appears
>to be composed of three highly divergent lineages.
>
>The African lineage previously reported (named A) is present in
>almost all the localities except those from north-eastern Africa. In
>this area, two newly described lineages (called O and Y), putatively
>originating from the Near East, are observed in high proportion.
>This suggests an important differentiation of Ethiopian and Egyptian
>honeybees from those of other African areas.
>
>The A lineage is also present in high proportion in populations from
>the Iberian Peninsula and Sicily. Furthermore, eight populations
>from Morocco, Guinea, Malawi and South Africa have been assayed with
>six microsatellite loci and compared to a set of eight additional
>populations from Europe and the Middle East.
>
>The African populations display higher genetic variability than
>European populations at all microsatellite loci studied thus far.
>This suggests that African populations have larger effective sizes
>than European ones. According to their microsatellite allele
>frequencies, the eight African populations cluster together, but are
>divided in two subgroups.
>
>These are the populations from Morocco and those from the other
>African countries. The populations from southern Europe show very
>low levels of Africanization at nuclear microsatellite loci.

--
Peter Borst <[log in to unmask]>