Morphogenetic diversity of the honeybee Apis mellifera L. from the mountain-forest zone of Crimea

By using morphometric and molecular-genetic methods, the population of honeybees of apiaries located in the mountain-forest zone of the Crimean Peninsula under conditions of prolonged isolation from other bee farms of the peninsula was studied. The hypothesis that the bees of this apiary may show signs of lost Crimean bees was analyzed. The complex of morphological traits makes the bees of the examined apiaries closer to Italian, Krajina, and Ukrainian steppe bees and, to a lesser extent, to Carpathian bees. The results of molecular genetic analysis of the initial part of the mtDNA COI gene from GenBank for the races under consideration revealed the evolutionary proximity of the bees studied to representatives of Italian bees. The bees of the isolated apiary are united into a single haplotype. The sequences of the mtDNA COI locus were obtained from Carpathian bees from Moscow oblast and Tajikistan. In terms of differences between the Italian bee haplotype and haplotypes of bees from other regions related to Carpathian bees, it is suggested that the haplotypes of the apiary studied are more similar to Carpathian bees. The investigations do not reject the hypothesis that bees of the isolated apiary may have traits typical of Crimean bees.