Well found on my blog guys, today I wanted to talk about our European bee, and compare it with what is another great species, the Saharan bee.
These are quarantine days, so what we can do is we can study as much as possible about the biology and history of our little bees.
We start by saying that the honeybee mellifera melliferia develops in central Europe, and then we go to create various subspecies in each country.
In Italy the local subspecies is the ligustica spinola, we can differentiate it from its other European sisters for the tapered body and "the leather" colour that distinguishes it from its carnic and British sisters which, on the contrary, have a colour tending to black .
As for the Saharan apis mellifera its origins are more complex, as it has never been a real study until today.
What we know is that in the north/central part of Africa the most diffused species are the Intermissa apis mellifera and the Saharan apis mellifera or also called the yellow bee.
On average more aggressive than the European honey bee, but at the same time big producers of honey, in the past were organized numerous initiatives that involved Italian and French beekeepers in companies in Gana or in other regions of Africa.
From the organizational point of view there are not many differences within the hive hierarchy, the subdivision in the various classes is unchanged. Then we find a queen predisposed to the maintenance of the hive population, tireless egg-depositor, will keep constant the number of bees inside the hive.
The bees which we can subdivide into 3 other subcategories, the workers, the guardians and the foragers, each with very different roles and that will change according to the age of the bee itself. The bees are the same. Finally, we find the drones, which besides guaranteeing the fecundation and therefore the reproduction of the family during the sciamatory period, from the last researches it has been discovered how the calorific power of the male is higher than that of the female, In this way the drone plays a fundamental role in the thermoregulation of the hive.
The desertification in continuous expansion will soon lead to a distortion of what are the various local subspecies, so it will be interesting and important to start studying what are the other varieties of bees present and especially in areas of our planet that already live in this situation of drought.
As for the black sicula bee present in the region of Sicily, which proves to have had in the past several genetic exchanges with African bees and for this reason seems to live at ease in southern Italy.
drawings made by my father for previous articles
There are many differences regarding the type of approach to beekeeping, for example as you can see in the images of the hives, and this will most likely influence the adaptation of the bees from one typology to another.
Other considerations should be made on what biodiversity is and how to safeguard it, in fact right at this historic moment a large number of European subspecies are in serious risk of extinction.
Therefore we are not talking about the quality of bees, but about protecting old types that maintain particular traits and of priceless genetic value.
Greetings to all of you at the end of this little reflection!