Syrian bees actually of the "A" lineage not "O"

954 Views 6 Replies 1 Participant Last post by HaplozygousNut, Oct 25, 2021

HaplozygousNut

Discussion Starter · Aug 21, 2020

I am reading this article about Syrian bees being of the African "A" lineage and not the Middle Eastern "O" lineage, or even being its own new lineage:
https://bmcgenet.biomedcentral.com/track/pdf/10.1186/1471-2156-14-117

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HaplozygousNut

Discussion Starter · #2 · Aug 21, 2020 (Edited)

Pictures of bees in northern Aleppo, Syria:
https://english.enabbaladi.net/arch...ekeepers-work-in-northern-aleppo-countryside/

I have a colony here in North Carolina that shows some similarities in looks to the bees in northern Aleppo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G64aqUd6FMk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgDB-lLe9HY

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HaplozygousNut

Discussion Starter · #3 · Apr 20, 2021 (Edited)

The bees in the photo from northern Aleppo, Syria are probably Anatolian or Anatolian hybrid instead of Syrian bees. Syrian bees are only found farther south than that.

Syrian bee photos in Jordan:

25 Fascinating Honey Bee Facts to Sweeten the Mind

Honey bees are fascinating creatures. Not only do they make delicious honey, but they also are responsible for pollinating crops. Even though wine grapes

winecountrytable.com

Another photo of light bees with dark tipped abdomens from Jordan:

How We Take Care of Bees | Jordan Winery

A sustainable farm like Jordan Estate is home not only to grapevines, but also to bees. Learn how we take care of our bees for both biodiversity and honey.

www.jordanwinery.com

Aggressive light colony's after swarm here in North Carolina. Syrian genetics? (set the youtube video at higher Resolution to see better the light colored bees with dark tipped abodemns):

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HaplozygousNut

Discussion Starter · #4 · May 18, 2021 (Edited)

Apis mellifera yemenitica ("Y" lineage) are similar genetically to A. m. lamarkii (Egyptian bee, "A" or "Z" lineage) and A. m. syriaca (Syrian bee, "A" or "Z" lineage):

Research Update: Anatolian & Arabian Honey Bees - UF/IFAS Entomology and Nematology Department

The UF/IFAS Honey Bee Laboratory has collaborated on research that led to two 2020 publications on different honey bee subspecies. Below are summaries of the research and links to the full publications. Apis mellifera anatoliaca – the Anatolian honey bee Key Finding: The research team showed...

blogs.ifas.ufl.edu

Taxonomic tree of honeybee subspecies:

https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S1226861520300601-ga1_lrg.jpg

It would be cool if they test Cyprian bee (Apis mellifera cypria) to see if they are "O" lineage or not, unless they already done that.

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HaplozygousNut

Discussion Starter · #5 · May 18, 2021

A new subspecies of honeybee was found from the Kufra Oasis in Libya. They are near the Egyptian bee in range, so they could to be related.

Island of honeybees in African desert

A unique population of honeybees isolated for perhaps the last 10,000 years has been found living at an oasis in the northern Sahara Desert.

www.nbcnews.com

Libyan honeybees cause a buzz

www.international.uni-halle.de

BBC - Earth News - Honeybees survive for millennia in Sahara desert oasis

news.bbc.co.uk

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HaplozygousNut

Discussion Starter · #6 · May 19, 2021

HaplozygousNut said:
Apis mellifera yemenitica ("Y" lineage) are similar genetically to A. m. lamarkii (Egyptian bee, "A" or "Z" lineage) and A. m. syriaca (Syrian bee, "A" or "Z" lineage):

Research Update: Anatolian & Arabian Honey Bees - UF/IFAS Entomology and Nematology Department

The UF/IFAS Honey Bee Laboratory has collaborated on research that led to two 2020 publications on different honey bee subspecies. Below are summaries of the research and links to the full publications. Apis mellifera anatoliaca – the Anatolian honey bee Key Finding: The research team showed...

blogs.ifas.ufl.edu

----------------------------------

Reading online I am confused about which bee lineages are valid lineages:

Genetic network analysis between Apis mellifera subspecies based on mtDNA argues the purity of specimens from North Africa, the Levant and Saudi Arabia

This study aimed to analyze the genetic relationships between honey bee subspecies using reference specimens and recently collected specimens from dif…

www.sciencedirect.com

Are entomologists studying bees from hybridization zones causing confusion?

Quote:
"Honey bee subspecies are assigned to these linages using morphometry and genetic methods; but variations of the results were observed between the two approaches. For Example, the Egyptian honey bees, A. m. lamarckii, in A lineage based on morphometry (Ruttner, 1988) but in O lineage based on mtDNA (Arias and Sheppard, 1996). Also, the Yemeni honey bees, A. m. jemenitica, in A lineage according to morphometry (Ruttner, 1988) and in Y lineage based on mtDNA (Coulibaly et al., 2019). Indeed, transition zones were detected between some subspecies (Kandemir et al., 2006a, Dukku, 2016, Alburaki et al., 2011)."

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HaplozygousNut

Discussion Starter · #7 · Oct 25, 2021

HaplozygousNut said:
The bees in the photo from northern Aleppo, Syria are probably Anatolian or Anatolian hybrid instead of Syrian bees. Syrian bees are only found farther south than that.

Syrian bee photos in Jordan:

25 Fascinating Honey Bee Facts to Sweeten the Mind

Honey bees are fascinating creatures. Not only do they make delicious honey, but they also are responsible for pollinating crops. Even though wine grapes

winecountrytable.com

Another photo of light bees with dark tipped abdomens from Jordan:

How We Take Care of Bees | Jordan Winery

A sustainable farm like Jordan Estate is home not only to grapevines, but also to bees. Learn how we take care of our bees for both biodiversity and honey.

www.jordanwinery.com

Aggressive light colony's after swarm here in North Carolina. Syrian genetics? (set the youtube video at higher Resolution to see better the light colored bees with dark tipped abodemns):

There are very light colored bees in Iraq, too. That is where Persian bees (Apis mellifera meda) are said to be.

(See the light bees at 0:31. A. m. meda?)

A. m. meda and A. m. anatoliaca are now in the sublineage "Z" of the "A" lineage, the same as the Syrian bee:

A revision of subspecies structure of western honey bee Apis mellifera

The taxonomy of honey bee A. mellifera contains a lot of issues due to the specificity of population structure, features of biology and resolutions of…

www.sciencedirect.com

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