UC Davis postdoctoral researcher Julie Cridland is working with Santiago Ramirez, assistant professor of evolution and ecology at UC Davis, and Neil Tsutsui, professor of environmental science, policy and management at UC Berkeley, to understand the population structure of honey bees (Apis mellifera) in California. To understand California bees, the researchers realized that they first needed to better understand honey bee populations in their native range in the Old World. There are two major lineages of honey bees in Europe -- C, "Central European," including Italy and Austria and M, including Western European populations from Spain to Norway -- which give rise to most of the honey bees used in agriculture worldwide. The more docile C lineage bees came later, and today many California bees are from the C lineage, but there is still a huge amount of genetic diversity, Ramirez said. "You can't understand the relationships among bee populations in California without understanding the populations they come from," Cridland said.
Where do honey bees come from? A new study clears some of the fog around honey bee origins. The work could be useful in breeding bees resistant to disease or pesticides. Honeybees are essentially to our world and agriculture. In order to have plants grow and prosper we need pollination which the bees help do. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/02/170217012456.htm
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May 2017
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