Honey bees in Slovakia

Abstract

Beekeeping in the territory of Slovakia has a long tradition beginning in the late 18th century. Nowadays, six honey bee breeding stations, 58 reproduction farms and more than 15,000 registered beekeepers represent the apiculture sector in Slovakia. The population of indigenous Carniolan bee (A. m. carnica), that is the most common honey bee race in Slovakia is endangered due to crossbreeding with imported bees of unknown origin. The aim of our study was to characterize Carniolan honey bee population using molecular markers. A total of 79 Slovak Carniolan workers collected from breeding and reproduction farms in Slovakia were analysed and compared with 85 reference bees of A. mellifera mellifera, A. mellifera macedonica, A. mellifera ligustica and Buckfast using 10 microsatellite markers. Bayesian and frequency-based methods have been used to successfully assign 95 % of individuals to tested populations. Genetic structure analysis using the Bayesian clustering method incorporated in STRUCTURE package showed two distinct clusters in the Slovak population of A. m. carnica and its reasonable admixture with A. m. macedonica and Buckfast species. The tRNAleu-cox2 intergenic region of mitochondrial DNA was sequenced in 66 Carniolan workers. We found that 71.2 % of samples correspond to 5 known haplotypes belonging to C lineage (C2c, C1a, C2d, C2e and C2z) and 28.8 % of samples have novel mutations in the sequenced region of mtDNA.