''Apis mellifera adami'' is a
western honey bee
The western honey bee or European honey bee (''Apis mellifera'') is the most common of the 7–12 species of honey bees worldwide. The genus name ''Apis'' is Latin for "bee", and ''mellifera'' is the Latin for "honey-bearing" or "honey carrying" ...
subspecies, endemic to the island of
Crete
Crete ( el, Κρήτη, translit=, Modern: , Ancient: ) is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands, the 88th largest island in the world and the fifth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, after Sicily, Sardinia, Cyprus, ...
in the eastern Mediterranean.
Taxonomy
The ''Apis mellifera adami'' was classified by
Ruttner 1975 and named by him after
Brother Adam
Karl Kehrle OSB OBE (3 August 1898, Mittelbiberach, Germany – 1 September 1996, Buckfast, Devonshire, England, UK), known as Brother Adam, was a Benedictine monk, beekeeper, and an authority on bee breeding, developer of the Buc ...
.
Research in 2003 concluded that "the honey bee from Crete seems to be similar to the honey bee populations from other areas of Greece" while yet acknowledging that their genetic structures had most likely been changed over the past two decades due to migratory beekeeping and commercial breeding, concluding that there seemed to be no pure populations of ''A. m. adami'' left on the island.
Beekeeping
Western Cretan beehives are constructed of
terracotta
Terracotta, terra cotta, or terra-cotta (; ; ), in its material sense as an earthenware substrate, is a clay-based unglazed or glazed ceramic where the fired body is porous.
In applied art, craft, construction, and architecture, terracotta ...
, wood and
wicker. On the east of the island the hives are always ceramic.
[L.Nixo]
sphakia.classics.ox.ac.uk (Oxford University website)
''The Sphakia survey'' etrieved 2011-12-20cited also: Baumann, Hellmut 1993. Greek Wild Flowers, London: Herbert.
See also
*
Bee domestication and Beekeeping
References
Friedrich Ruttner (1975). Die Kretische Biene, Apis mellifica adami
he Cretan bee Deutsche Allgemeine Imkerzeitung, 9 (10), pp. 271–272.
External links
*A.Gönülşe
THE MIDDLE EAST TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY FEATURE EXTRACTION OF HONEYBEE FOREWINGS AND HINDLEGS USING IMAGE PROCESSING AND ACTIVE CONTOURS Middle East Technical University2004
etrieved 2011-12-20thesis states that ''A.m.adamii'' populate Cyprus
*G. W. Elderkin The Bee of Artemis The American Journal of Philology Vol. 60, No. 2 (1939), pp. 203–213 (article consists of 11 pages) Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
JSTOR part o
ITHAKA
{{Taxonbar, from=Q4779877
mellifera adami
Western honey bee breeds