Biomics

The local populations of the dark European honeybees Apis mellifera mellifera from the Urals and the Volga region were examined in this work. The genetic analysis of populations and colonies was performed based on the polymorphism of 9 microsatellite loci of the nuclear genome. We found some level of the introgression in the native genetic pool of the A. m.mellifera in the Urals and the Volga Region by hybridization with introduced from Caucasus a “southern” subspecies Apis mellifera carpatica and Apis mellifera caucasica. The greatest proportion of the remaining indigenous gene pool of A. m. mellifera is the core of the gene pool of the population of the subspecies A. m. mellifera, which distributed over the entire territory of Perm Krai and the north of the Republic of Bashkortostan. Finally, we found biggest reserves of native gene pool of A. m. mellifera in the Urals and Volga region, which contain about thousand colonies of purebred dark European honeybees.

dark European honeybees Apis mellifera mellifera, native gene pool, microsatellite loci, extant reserves, introgression, genetic standard, heterozygosity

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