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List of Apis mellifera subspecies

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Apis mellifera, the western honey bee, has many subspecies. The most recent taxonomic revision in 1999 recognized 28 subspecies and three additional subspecies have been described since then (Apis mellifera pomonella in 2003, Apis mellifera simensis in 2011, and Apis mellifera sinisxinyuan in 2016; see below). Other sources recognize as many as 33 subspecies.

Apis mellifera

Subspecies of Africa

  • Apis mellifera adansonii, classified by Latreille, 1804 (the West African honey bee) found in Nigeria and Burkina Faso.
  • Apis mellifera capensis, classified by Eschscholtz, 1822 (the Cape honey bee) found in southern South Africa.
  • Apis mellifera intermissa, classified by von Buttel-Reepen, 1906 (the Tellian honey bee) found in the north western coast of Africa from Tunisia, along Libya and westerly into Morocco (north of the Atlas Mountains.
  • Apis mellifera jemenitica, classified by Ruttner, 1976 (the Arabian honey bee) found in Somalia, Uganda, Sudan and Yemen.
  • Apis mellifera lamarckii, classified by Cockerell, 1906 (the Egyptian honey bee) found in Nile Valley of Egypt and Sudan, domesticated before 2600BC. This mitotype can also be identified in honey bees from California.
  • Apis mellifera litorea, classified by Smith, 1961 (the East African coastal honey bee) found in the low elevations of east Africa.
  • Apis mellifera monticola, classified by Smith, 1961 (the East African mountain honey bee) found in the high altitude mountains with elevation between 1,500 and 3,100 metres of east Africa, such as (Mt. Elgon, Mt. Kilimanjaro, Mt. Kenya and Mt. Meru).
  • Apis mellifera ruttneri, classified by Sheppard, Arias, Grech & Meixner in 1997 (the Maltese honey bee) endemic to the Maltese islands.
  • Apis mellifera sahariensis, classified by Baldensperger, 1932 (the Saharan honey bee) found in northwestern Africa, on the southern side of the Atlas Mountains. (the existence of this subspecies has previously been questioned, possibly having been misidentified with the A. m. intermissa).
  • Apis mellifera scutellata, classified by Lepeletier, 1836 (the East African lowland honey bee) found in central and east Africa; also as hybridized populations in South America, Central America and the southern USA. In an effort to address concerns by Brazilian beekeepers and to increase honey production in Brazil, Warwick Kerr, a Brazilian geneticist, was asked by Brazilian federal and state authorities in 1956 to import several East African lowland queens from Tanzania to Piracicaba, São Paulo State in southern Brazil. Due to a mishap, some of the queens escaped. The East African lowland queens' virgin daughters mated with local European honey bee drones and produced what is now known as the Africanized honey bee in South and North America. The intense struggle for survival of western honey bees in Sub-Saharan Africa is given as the reason that this subspecies is proactive in defending the hive and also more likely to abandon an existing hive and abscond to a more secure location. They direct more of their energies to defensive behaviors and less of their energies to honey storage. East African lowland honey bees are leather-colored and difficult to distinguish by eye from the darker strains of the Italian honey bee.
  • Apis mellifera simensis, classified by Meixner, Leta, Koeniger and Fuchs, 2011 (the Ethiopian honey bee) found in Ethiopia.
  • Apis mellifera unicolor, classified by Latreille, 1804 (the Madagascan honey bee) endemic to the island of Madagascar.

Subspecies of the Middle East and Asia

  • Apis mellifera anatoliaca, classified by Maa, 1953 (the Anatolian honey bee) its range is in the central Anatolia in Turkey.
  • Apis mellifera caucasia, classified by Pollmann, 1889 (the Caucasian honey bee) found in the central Caucasus and towards the Turkish Black Sea coast.
  • Apis mellifera cypria, classified by Pollmann, 1879 (the Cyprus honey bee) endemic to the island of Cyprus.
  • Apis mellifera meda, classified by Skorikov, 1929 (the Median honey bee), more common in Iran and Iraq, but its range extends into south eastern Turkey and northern Syria.
  • Apis mellifera mellifera, classified by Linnaeus, 1758 (the European dark bee) originating in central Asia and migrating throughout Europe after the last ice age, having the largest geographic range of all European honey bees. It was domesticated in Europe and imported into Britain during Roman times and Ireland during Christian times. Hives were later exported to North America in the colonial era in 1622 where they were referred to as the English Fly by the Native American Indians. In 2014-2017 a European wide survey was conducted with 621 colonies, which included the various subspecies kept by beekeepers, it found that the A. m. mellifera was the most aggressive, had the highest swarming tendency and the lowest hygienic behaviour - a trait closely linked with Varroa sensitive hygiene.
  • Apis mellifera pomonella, classified by Sheppard & Meixner, 2003 (the Tian Shan honey bee) endemic to the Tian Shan Mountains in Central Asia.
  • Apis mellifera remipes, classified by Gerstäcker, 1862 (the Armenian honey bee) found in the region of Armenia.
  • Apis mellifera sinisxinyuan, classified by C.Chen, Z.Liu, Q.Pan, X.Chen, H.Wang, H.Guo, S.Liu, H.Lu, S.Tian, R.Li and W.Shi, 2016 (the Xinyuan honey bee) discovered in 2016 in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, China, this subspecies has a range that is the farthest east known for the species.
  • Apis mellifera syriaca, classified by Skorikov, 1929 (the Syrian honey bee) found between Turkey and Egypt.

Subspecies of Europe

References

  1. ^ Michael S Engel (1999). "The taxonomy of recent and fossil honey bees (Hymenoptera: Apidae; Apis)". Journal of Hymenoptera Research. 8 (2): 180. Retrieved 4 January 2023.
  2. Rustem A. Ilyasov, Myeong-lyeol Lee, Jun-ichi Takahashi, Hyung Wook Kwon, Alexey G. Nikolenko (2020). "A revision of subspecies structure of western honey bee Apis mellifera". Saudi Journal of Biological Sciences. 27 (12): 3615–3621. doi:10.1016/j.sjbs.2020.08.001. PMC 7714978. PMID 33304172.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  3. https://www.fondazioneslowfood.com/en/ark-of-taste-slow-food/egyptian-honeybee/ Egyptian honeybee Ark of taste
  4. Nielsen, D.I.; Ebert, P.R.; Page, R.E.; Hunt, G.J.; Guzmán-Novoa, E. (January 2000). "Improved Polymerase Chain Reaction-Based Mitochondrial Genotype Assay for Identification of the Africanized Honey Bee (Hymenoptera: Apidae)". Annals of the Entomological Society of America. 93 (1): 1–6. doi:10.1603/0013-8746(2000)093[0001:IPCRBM]2.0.CO;2. S2CID 86223636.
  5. Abramson, Charles I.; Aquino, Italo S. (2002). "Behavioral Studies of Learning in the Africanized Honey Bee (Apis mellifera L.)". Brain, Behavior and Evolution. 59 (1–2): 68–86. doi:10.1159/000063734. PMID 12097861. S2CID 44570522.
  6. Meixner, Marina D.; Leta, Messele Abebe; Koeniger, Nikolaus; Fuchs, Stefan (2011). "The honey bees of Ethiopia represent a new subspecies of Apis mellifera—Apis mellifera simensis n. ssp" (PDF). Apidologie. 42 (3): 425–437. doi:10.1007/s13592-011-0007-y. S2CID 2294716.
  7. ^ Fontana, Paolo; et al. (2018). "Appeal for biodiversity protection of native honey bee subspecies of Apis mellifera in Italy" (PDF). Bulletin of Insectology. 71 (2): 257–271. Retrieved 6 September 2019.
  8. Yılmaz, Prof Dr Orhan. "Honey Bee Biology In Turkey". {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  9. Renaud, Tabitha (2010). Finding worth in the wilderness (Thesis ed.). Ottawa, Canada: University of Ottawa. p. 74. ISBN 9780494741429. Retrieved 16 November 2018.
  10. ^ Andonov, S. (2014). "Swarming, defensive and hygienic behaviour in honey bee colonies of different genetic origin in a pan-European experiment". Journal of Apicultural Research. 53 (2): 248–260. Bibcode:2014JApiR..53..248U. doi:10.3896/IBRA.1.53.2.06. S2CID 56261380. Retrieved 10 October 2019.
  11. Sheppard, Walter S.; Meixner, Marina D. (July 2003). "a new honey bee subspecies from Central Asia" (PDF). Apidologie. 34 (4): 367–375. doi:10.1051/apido:2003037.
  12. Chao Chen; et al. (January 27, 2016). "Genomic Analyses Reveal Demographic History and Temperate Adaptation of the Newly Discovered Honey Bee Subspecies Apis mellifera sinisxinyuan n. ssp". Molecular Biology and Evolution. 33 (5): 1337–1348. doi:10.1093/molbev/msw017. PMC 4839221. PMID 26823447.

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