History of Species
The species is considered as making a comeback after Varroa was introduced to Malta in 1992. At that time colonies of bees from abroad were imported to compensate for the loss of native colonies. In 1997 the species was identified as a sub-species. It breeds well with the Italian sub-species making a strain that defends well against Varroa and has good honey yield, while less aggressive, although this is somewhat endangering the Maltese sub-species as a genetically distinct entity and after some generations it ends up a totally aggressive hybrid.
Read more about this topic: Maltese Honey Bee
Famous quotes containing the words history and/or species:
“Social history might be defined negatively as the history of a people with the politics left out.”
—G.M. (George Macaulay)
“If there is a species which is more maltreated than children, then it must be their toys, which they handle in an incredibly off-hand manner.... Toys are thus the end point in that long chain in which all the conditions of despotic high-handedness are in play which enchain beings one to another, from one species to another—cruel divinities to their sacrificial victims, from masters to slaves, from adults to children, and from children to their objects.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)