Within

biological taxonomy In biology, taxonomy () is the scientific study of naming, defining ( circumscribing) and classifying groups of biological organisms based on shared characteristics. Organisms are grouped into taxa (singular: taxon) and these groups are given ...

, a honey bee race would be an informal rank in the taxonomic hierarchy, below the level of

subspecies In biological classification, subspecies is a rank below species, used for populations that live in different areas and vary in size, shape, or other physical characteristics (morphology), but that can successfully interbreed. Not all species ...

. It has been used as a higher rank than strain, with several strains making up one race. Therefore, a strain (within the honey bee context) is a lower-level

taxonomic rank In biological classification, taxonomic rank is the relative level of a group of organisms (a taxon) in an ancestral or hereditary hierarchy. A common system consists of species, genus, family (biology), family, order (biology), order, class (b ...

used at the intraspecific level within a race of a

. Strains are often seen as inherently artificial concepts, more usually within biology as characterized by a specific intent for

genetic isolation Introduction Geographic isolation or other factors that prevent reproduction have resulted in a population of organisms with a change in genetic diversity and ultimately leads to the genetic isolation of species. Genetic isolates form new specie ...

, however, within beekeeping circles, ''strain'' is more likely to be used to describe very minor differences throughout the same subspecies, such as the color ranges of '' A. m. carnica'' from brown to grey. Within '' A. m. ligustica'' there are two races, the darker leather brown northern Italian bee from the Ligurian Alps region which was discovered to be resistant to acarine in the 1900s, while the other Italian bee race, from regions near Bologna and further south, was highly susceptible to acarine and within this race there are two color strains, the traditional Italian yellow and a rarer all-golden color.

Description

The races of the honey bee are classified into various named instances of an informal

of race—below that of

—on the basis of shared genetic traits. The term "honey bee" means a bee of the species ''

Apis mellifera 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", ...

'' which descend from bees that originated in Africa. Differences in the colors of bees may be more pronounced in

queens Queens is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Queens County, in the U.S. state of New York. Located on Long Island, it is the largest New York City borough by area. It is bordered by the borough of Brooklyn at the western tip of Long ...

and drones; workers are much less easily differentiated by color. Drones are produced from the unfertilized eggs of queens and therefore their genetic characteristics depend entirely on those of the queen, whereas worker bees are produced from fertilized eggs. To make things even more complicated, a queen will normally mate multiple times, the

spermatozoa A spermatozoon (; also spelled spermatozoön; ; ) is a motile sperm cell, or moving form of the haploid cell that is the male gamete. A spermatozoon joins an ovum to form a zygote. (A zygote is a single cell, with a complete set of chromosomes, ...

from which are retained within her body, meaning that workers may only be half-sisters to each other, and their colors and other characteristics may differ. In the Americas, there has been a great deal of interbreeding of subspecies, since all honey bees were imported at some point after 1492 and the subsequent

Columbian Exchange The Columbian exchange, also known as the Columbian interchange, was the widespread transfer of plants, animals, precious metals, commodities, culture, human populations, technology, diseases, and ideas between the New World (the Americas) in ...

. Among beekeepers, the term ''race'' has been used increasingly imprecisely, and is often used to refer to bee

and hybrids, as well as subspecies divisions, more improperly. There are also variations within subspecies (like within '' A. m. mellifera''), being little more than color variants that may not be correlated with distinct distributions; these are sometimes referred to as ''native races''. These are often given their own names when described, but zoological nomenclature does not recognize these named "races" as valid, as only ranks of subspecies and above have formal scientific names in zoology.

Classifications

Based on morphological similarities and the separation of regions during and since the last Ice Age, there are five bee lineages: * A (

African African or Africans may refer to: * Anything from or pertaining to the continent of Africa: ** People who are native to Africa, descendants of natives of Africa, or individuals who trace their ancestry to indigenous inhabitants of Africa *** Ethn ...

, subspecies from central and southern

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

) * C (“ carnica”, subspecies from east and south of the

Alps The Alps () ; german: Alpen ; it, Alpi ; rm, Alps ; sl, Alpe . are the highest and most extensive mountain range system that lies entirely in Europe, stretching approximately across seven Alpine countries (from west to east): France, Sw ...

, including those along the northern

Mediterranean The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa, and on the e ...

) * M (“ mellifera”, subspecies from

western Europe Western Europe is the western region of Europe. The region's countries and territories vary depending on context. The concept of "the West" appeared in Europe in juxtaposition to "the East" and originally applied to the ancient Mediterranean ...

), * O (

Oriental The Orient is a term for the East in relation to Europe, traditionally comprising anything belonging to the Eastern world. It is the antonym of ''Occident'', the Western World. In English, it is largely a metonym for, and coterminous with, the ...

, subspecies from the eastern end of the range of the species) * Y (" yemenitica", subspecies from

Ethiopia Ethiopia, , om, Itiyoophiyaa, so, Itoobiya, ti, ኢትዮጵያ, Ítiyop'iya, aa, Itiyoppiya officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country in the Horn of Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the ...

) (Hybrids and bee breeds, even with known ancestry, such as the

Buckfast bee The Buckfast bee is a breed of honey bee, a cross of many subspecies and their strains, developed by Brother Adam (born Karl Kehrle in 1898 in Germany), who was in charge of beekeeping from 1919 at Buckfast Abbey in Devon in the United Kingdom ...

, are not included within the bee lineages; they are crossings of the ''Apis mellifera'' subspecies and are not defined as subspecies in their own right) The known subspecies within the lineage 'A' are: * '' A. m. adansonii'' * '' A. m. capensis'' * '' A. m. intermissa'' (formerly known as ''A. m. major'') * '' A. m. jemenitica'' * '' A. m. lamarckii'' * '' A. m. litorea'' * '' A. m. monticola'' * '' A. m. ruttneri'' * '' A. m. sahariensis'' * '' A. m. scutellata'' * '' A. m. unicolor'' The known subspecies within the lineage 'C' are: * '' A. m. carnica'' * '' A. m. cecropia'' * '' A. m. ligustica'' * '' A. m. macedonica'' The known subspecies within the lineage 'M' are: * '' A. m. mellifera'' * '' A. m. iberiensis'' (formerly known as ''A. m. iberica'') * '' A. m. sinisxinyuan'' The known subspecies within the lineage 'O' are: * '' A. m. adami'' * '' A. m. anatoliaca'' * '' A. m. armeniaca'' * '' A. m. caucasica'' * '' A. m. cypria'' * '' A. m. meda'' * '' A. m. syriaca'' The known subspecies within the lineage 'Y') are: * '' A. m. bandasii'' * '' A. m. sudanensis'' * '' A. m. yemenitica''

References

{{BeeColonyMemberTypes Beekeeping