Location: Bee Research Laboratory
Title: Found in translation: Honey bees, an origin storyAuthor
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Submitted to: Bee Culture
Publication Type: Review Article Publication Acceptance Date: 2/7/2022 Publication Date: 2/15/2022 Citation: Evans, J.D. 2022. Found in translation: Honey bees, an origin story. Bee Culture. 2:28-29. Interpretive Summary: Technical Abstract: A long time ago, in a treehole far, far, away, our honey bee heroines started a journey that would plant them throughout the globe. For generations, scientists have puzzled over the timing of all this and the location of that treehole, or treeholes. Kathleen Dogantzis, Amro Zayed, and colleagues have applied their expertise and the latest genomic technologies to address this puzzle in the most complete way yet. Their paper, “Thrice out of Asia and the adaptive radiation of the western honey bee” was just published in the journal Science Advances (Vol 7, Issue 49, and freely available at DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abj2151). In this study they sampled the entire genomes of 251 honey bees collected from the historical range of Apis mellifera (the ‘western’ honey bee, the species that is dominant among managed honey bees). Amidst these sampled genomes are bees from Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia, all places vying to be the source of A. mellifera. |
