Native Irish Honey Bee Society – Apis mellifera mellifera

Native Irish Honey Bee Society
Apis mellifera mellifera

Research Papers – AMM and Bee Breeding

From where did the Western honeybee (Apis mellifera) originate?
Fan Han, Andreas Wallberg, and Matthew T Webster
Ecol Evol. 2012 August; 2(8): 1949–1957. Published online 2012

Standard methods for characterising subspecies and ecotypes of Apis mellifera
Journal of Apicultural Research, Vol. 52(4)
Meixner et al.
The limitations of biometric control on pure race breeding in Apis
mellifera
Journal of Apicultural Research 30(2): 54-59 (1991) – Robin F Moritz
Paper outlining some limitations to bivariate morphometry

Varying degrees of Apis mellifera ligustica introgression in protected populations of the black honeybee, Apis mellifera mellifera, in northwest Europe
Molecular Ecology (2005) 14, 93 – 106 – ANNETTE B. JENSEN et al,
Paper demonstrates existence of several relatively pure populations of AMM in various Western European countries

Introgression of Lineage C Honey Bees into Black Honey Bees: a Genome wide estimation using SNPs
Henriques et al

Morphological and molecular characterization of the Landes
honey bee (Apis mellifera L.) ecotype for genetic conservation

J Insect Conserv (2008) 12:527–537 – James P. Strange, Lionel Garnery, Walter S. Sheppard
Discusses multivariate morphometry and how an AMM population has remained relatively pure even when other sub-species are kept in the area

Bee genetics and conservation
Apidologie 40 (2009) 237–262 – Amro Zayed
A look at potential inbreeding problems and sex alleles at the CSD locus

Genetic Aspects of Queen Production – Presented by Tom Glenn at the A.N.E.R.C.E.A. queen breeders meeting in Abbeyville, France 11/24/07
Simple explanation of haplo-diploid genetics with colour coded diagrams

Sex determination in honeybees
By: Tanya Gempe, Ph.D. & Martin Beye, Ph.D. (Department of Genetics, Heinrich Heine University of Dusseldorf) © 2009 Nature Education
More on inbreeding and CSD locus

Thrice Out of Africa: Ancient and Recent Expansions of the Honey Bee, Apis mellifera
SCIENCE – VOL 314 27 OCTOBER 2006 Charles W. Whitfield et al
Evolutionary history of the honeybee. Explains the relatedness between different bee sub species

Racial admixture of Apis meiifera in
Tasmania, Australia: similarities and differences with natural hybrid zones in
Europe

Heredity 74 (1995) 315—325 Genetical Society of Great Britain – BENJAMIN P. OLDROYD et al
In cooler mountain regions, there is much less hybridization, with the A.
m. mellifera subspecies characteristics strongly predominating

THE HEREDITY OF COLOUR PATTERNS IN THE HONEYBEE
International Symposium on bee biology, MOSCOW, USSR, August 1976 – Jerzy Woyke
Results show clearly that yellow coloration is dominant over black
Inheritance of colour patterns in the honeybee is governed by 3 major allelic genes
having their expression modified by 6-7 polygenes with alternative alleles for light
and dark.

Sex Determination and Bee Breeding
U.S.D.A., Agr. Res. Adm., Bureau of Entomology and Plant Quarantine – William C. Roberts and Otto Mackensen
Reprinted from AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL, Volume 91
No. 9, pages 382-384, September 1951

Impacts of the most significant honeybee research in Australia on the beekeeping industry
The minimum age at which queen bees should be caught from mating nuclei lies between 28 and 35 days, this provided the premium survival after 15 weeks of 66.25% (60% when queens caught at 28 day and 72.5% when queens caught at 35 days).
Rhodes and Denney

Rearing queen bees
Mark Johnstone
Australian booklet with good photos and background information

Wilkinson and Brown
Concise queenright queenrearing paper

Partial reproductive isolation between European subspecies of honey bees
Andrzej Oleksa, Jerzy Wilde, Adam Tofilski, Igor J. Chybicki
Northern Poland is inhabited by native Apis mellifera mellifera (AMM) and the non-native A. m. carnica (AMC) which was introduced by beekeepers. However, hybrids between the two subspecies of honey bee are relatively rare.

Drone Saturation For Small Scale Operations – Larry Connor in Bee Culture
 
NSW Agriculture publications
 
 
Boris Baer. Sexual selection in Apis bees.
Apidologie, Springer Verlag (Germany), 2005, 36(2), pp.187-200.
 
Observation of the Mating Behavior of Honey Bee (Apis mellifera L.) Queens Using Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID): Factors Influencing the Duration and Frequency of Nuptial Flights
Ina Monika Margret Heidinger,  Marina Doris Meixner, Stefan Berg  and Ralph Büchler
Insects 2014, 5, 513-527; doi:10.3390/insects5030513
 
Colony Failure Linked to Low Sperm Viability in Honey Bee (Apis mellifera) Queens and an Exploration of Potential Causative Factors
Jeffery S. Pettis, Nathan Rice, Katie Joselow, Dennis van Engelsdorp, Veeranan Chaimanee. Published: February 10, 2016, PLOS
We documented that during shipment queens are exposed to temperature spikes (<8 and > 40°C) and these spikes can kill 50% or more of the sperm stored in queen spermathecae in live queens.
Genetic integrity of the Dark European honey bee
(Apis mellifera mellifera) from protected populations: – Pinto et al 2014
Robert Brodschneider,, Gérard Arnold, Norbert Hrassnigg, and Karl Crailsheim
Discussion of long-term changes in patriline composition due to mixing processes in the queen’s spermatheca
Rare royal families in honeybees, Apis mellifera
Moritz et al, 2005
honeybee queens are not reared at random but are preferentially reared from rare “royal” subfamilies, which have extremely low frequencies in the colony’s worker force but a high frequency in the queens reared
Nucleotide Variability at Its Limit? Insights into the Number and Evolutionary Dynamics of the Sex-Determining Specificities of the Honey Bee Apis mellifera
Sarah Lechner et al, 2013
We show that the total number of csd alleles found in A. mellifera ranges from 53 (locally) to 87 (worldwide), which is much higher than was previously reported (20).