Modern methods of assessing the taxonomic affiliation of honeybee colonies

Abstract

At least 30 subspecies of the honeybee Apis mellifera L. were formed allopatrically during the evolution, which spreaded throughout all Africa, Europe and West Asia. The dark forest bee Apis mellifera mellifera is the only and most valuable subspecies for the Northern and Western Europe countries, adapted to productive living in the hard-continental climate of Eurasia. In the past 100 years, natural geographical isolation of subspecies has been disrupted as a result of a human activities. Mass transportations of honeybee colonies beyond the boundaries of their area have been threatened of loss the identity of gene pool of subspecies as a result of hybridization. Preservation of the gene pool of subspecies is possible only when controlling the transportation of honeybee colonies using the methods of identification of taxonomic affiliation of honeybee colonies. Now, dozens of methods have been developed to identify the taxonomic affiliation of honeybee's colony, which are based on the variability of body parts, allozyme loci, mitochondrial DNA loci, microsatellite nuclear loci, sites of single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP). The variability of microsatellite loci and the single nucleotide polymorphism sites have shown the greatest informativeness in identification of the taxonomic affiliation of honeybee's colony.