INTRODUCTION


 Descendants of ancestral honey bees migrated from the site of their

origin, presumed to be northeast Africa or the Middle East, and became widely

distributed in the Old World (Garnery, Cornuet & Solignac 1992). Subsequent

adaptation to a wide variety of ecological conditions resulted in the evolution

of subspecies of the honey bee, Apis mellifera L. (Ruttner 1988). These

subspecies are distinguished on the basis of physical, behavioral, and ecological

criteria and are defined quantitatively by discriminant analysis of morphological

characters (Daly & Balling 1978; Ruttner 1988; Ruttner, Tassencourt &

Louveaux 1978).

 Honey bees were first introduced to the New World by 17th and 18th

century European settlers. For over two hundred years, the genetic diversity

found in New World honey bees resulted from the importation of primarily four

European subspecies or races: west and north European A. m. mellifera

(referred to here as west European); north Mediterranean A. m. ligustica Spinola

and A. m. carnica Pollmann (which in this report will be called east European;

Ruttner 1988); and the east European bee A. m. caucasica Gorbachev (referred

to here as east European) (Kent 1988; Kerr, DeLeon & Dardo 1982).