Morphometric identification of the endemic Maltese honey bee (Apis mellifera ruttneri)

Abstract

Apis mellifera ruttneri is the endemic honey bee subspecies of the Maltese Islands. This population is endangered by hybridization with other honey bee subspecies that are frequently imported by beekeepers. It deserves conservation because of its unique behavioral traits including adaptation to the local climate. Conservation of honey bee subspecies is not easy, because it requires the identification of unhybridized source colonies by multiple morphological measurements or by molecular analysis. We present here a new method to identify A. m. ruttneri that is reliable and easy to use by both scientists and beekeepers. We have tested the new method using 312 workers collected from flowers in 7 locations and 52 managed colonies from Malta. Those bees formed two groups. One of the groups was interpreted as unhybridized A. m. ruttneri and the other group was interpreted as hybrids between A. m. ruttneri and imported bees. The new method to identify Maltese bees can provide a useful contribution to their conservation.

Keywords:

• honey bee
• subspecies identification
• Apis mellifera ruttneri
• geometric morphometrics
• wing morphometry

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Carmel Psaila and Bartłomiej Piotrowski for helping to obtain honey bee samples and two anonymous reviewers for the helpful comments on an earlier version of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Science Centre under Grant DEC-2013/10/E/NZ9/00682.