Grace McCormack What we can learn from wild honey bees

A lecture given by Grace McCormack at the 2022 National Honey Show entitled "What we can learn from wild honey bees". The National Honey Show gratefully acknowledge the Worshipful Company of Wax Chandlers for their support. Considered to be extinct due to habitat loss, parasites and disease, anecdotal evidence from beekeepers and genetic data first indicated the likely survival of honey bees in the wild. Dismissed initially as only being ‘feral’ (i.e. escapes from local apiaries) with poor survival we now know that honey bees continue to survive and thrive without beekeeper assistance. Not only that, but the threatened subspecies native to Ireland and the UK, continues to do well in Ireland despite the continued threats from imports. Evidence suggests that Apis mellifera mellifera also contributes significantly to the gene pool in the UK in many places. Understanding how wild honey bees have adapted to current threats facing honey bees will be of use to beekeepers in many ways. Also, the genetic characteristics of those bees that can survive multiple years in the wild will give additional insights around the bees that are best fitted to local environments. Here I will discuss results from our project investigating diversity of wild honey bees in Ireland, how we are using genomic data to better understand the impact of hybridisation on native bees and how wild bees compare to managed bees across a range of features. Preliminary data confirms the existence of local breeding pools. Given the tight association between bees and their environment this data suggests that it is better to use local bees where possible, and hints at the possible negative impact of importing bees into an area. Grace McCormack is a Professor in Zoology at NUI Galway. Her interests lie in evolutionary biology and particularly in using molecular data to understand how organisms are related to each other and the impacts this may have on conservation and on the evolution of organismal traits. The interaction between animals and their parasites/pathogens over evolutionary time is also of interest as is the use of this information in applied science such as biodiscovery (marine sponges) and apiculture (bees). Grace started beekeeping to better understand the species she is now studying, and the University apiary managed by her has 12-15 colonies.