European Dark Bee - Significance

Significance

Apis mellifera mellifera is no longer a significant commercial subspecies of the Western honey bee, but there are a number of dedicated hobbyist beekeepers that keep these bees in Europe and other parts of the world. Immigrants brought these subspecies into the Americas. Prior to their arrival, the American continent did not have any honey bees. Hybrid descendants of the original colonial black bees may also have survived in North America as feral bees. There are reports by beekeepers that, after the arrival of the Varroa mite on the American continent in 1987, some feral bee colonies survived. The original form is no longer present in North America. A common myth regarding European black bees is that they cannot sting because they do not have a stinger.

In Western Europe, dark bee breeds were the original honey bee stock until creation of the Buckfast bee. This is a hybrid breed whose progeny includes salvaged remnants of the British black bee, nearly extinct by then due to Acarapis woodi (acarine mite). The breeding stocks in Central Europe were nearly destroyed by order of the Nazis, who considered the honey yields not up to modern standards and wanted to "improve" the bee stocks kept in areas under their control.

This led to the creation of more aggressive, high-yield breeds (probably by cross-breeding dark and Buckfast high-yield strains with Carniolan honey bees), which, however, were very susceptible to Varroa mite infection and unpleasant to handle and were dropped from use after World War II, but just as in North America, some feral colonies survive. In the United States, 'M' lineage honey bees have been found in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Missouri, based on DNA sequencing analysis. Dedicated breeders and research facilities are today working on preserving and spreading what could be saved from the original stocks. There are only a handful of colonies present in Germany, but larger numbers have survived in Norway (lehzeni), the Alps (nigra) and Poland and Belgium (mellifera).