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History of the apiarian livestock in Belgium
The weight of the history
A great biological diversity
The black bee (Apis will mellifera will mellifera), native on our premises, occupies a very vast surface of distribution. It meets extremely various ecological conditions there. Under the effect of the natural selection, the black bee adapted to these varied ecological conditions, from where the appearance of a biological diversity (or) very important. This diversity is thus the result of a long evolution (approximately 200000 years). This irreplaceable work completed by nature thus produced populations rustic and adapted well to their medium, characteristics useful for the bee-keeping today, but also doubtless in the future.
Genetic erosion
Of the bee was preserved until the moment when the man started to practise the bee-keeping, and thus to domesticate the bee. Domestication remained very summary until half of the XIXème century, before the invention of the modern hives. However, the beekeeping in fixed hives implies all the same the use of rudimentary techniques of breeding. These techniques automatically involve a certain pressure of selection on the population of bees, and thus a reduction in biological diversity; the mechanism of genetic erosion is thus engaged and it will develop...!
Let us examine initially how the traditional bee-keeping or creationist applied to last century could influence it and produce a bee which today still tends to carry the traces of these completed times.
Fixed hives in the Cevennes in France (trunk of
chestnut)
Asphyxiate colonies
One asphyxiated formerly the colonies to collect honey; the heaviest bells which would give much honey and lightest which, for lack of sufficient provisions, would die during the winter were sacrificed. To maintain a livestock constant in the apiaries, the colonies were to give many swarms each year. Unconsciously, the bee-keepers of the time thus supported the stocks with a rate of high swarming. This selection continued during centuries; it decreased the genetic variability of the bee while contributing to the regression of the essaimeuses stocks.
"hunting"
On another side, certain behaviors considered today as of the defects were supported by the bee-keepers during many years. Thus, one reproaches the black bee his agitation on the executives. This character was selected by an old technique still into force in the south of Belgium about 1940, the hunting of bees. The transfer of a bell for harvest was carried out by tapotement: that consisted in making assemble the bees of a full bell, reversed, in an empty bell placed above the first by regularly tapping it using two sticks. At that time, the very nervous bees which left easily their frameworks were favoured. This characteristic is still quite present today in the little selected black bee.
Two bells superimposed for the realization of a hunting
(according to P. Marchenay, the man and the bee, edition
Shepherd-Levrault)Erroneous design
The erroneous design still into force today, according to which the aggressive colonies are the better producing ones also contributed to the deterioration of qualities of the black bee. The aggressive colonies are often cross colonies; time with others, they are characterized by their productivity, but it is obvious that one finds also colonies noncross, soft and very productive. Unfortunately, the maintenance of these colonies crossed in the apiaries amplified the process of erosion genetic.
Irremediable damage...
With the modern hives, more sophisticated techniques of breeding appear. Among these techniques, only one of them will hold our attention because it was most destroying of all; it acts of the importation of foreign bees, thus pertaining to another race that with the black bee. It has as an immediate consequence the appearance of cross colonies and a generalized interbreeding, the colonies cross reproducing in their turn with indigenous colonies, etc.
The damage is irremediable. It was necessary to assist, impotent, with the regression and the fragmentation of the surface of distribution of the indigenous bee to the profit of the cross bees. In several areas, the black bee quasi disappeared. Elsewhere, the genetic pool of the indigenous bee corresponds well to that of the black bee, but traces of crossing (genetic introgression) are generally found there. Genetic erosion reached proportions ever equalized up to now.
Current situation
As regards races, the situation in Belgium is extremely confused. Each one raises the race which it wishes. One is in a zone where cohabit of the colonies of foreign races and their crossings, beside a great number of colonies of more or less cross local bees where very often the genetic type of the indigenous black bee dominates.
An investigation ("audit of the bee-keeping") carried out in 1994 (there are unfortunately no more recent data) in all the Walloon Area and in Brussels gives an image of the situation as regards races of bees (figure below). It is noted that the local bee is represented best; the bee-keepers speak about local bee when they raise a bee of which they do not control the race. It acts of a black bee more or less crossed according to areas'.
Under these conditions, the black bee represents the essence of the Walloon genetic pool well. The buckfast is the "nonblack" race which today is the most success; in 1994, it is raised by close of a bee-keeper on five. The other races have a rather marginal and localised representation.
Representation (%) of the races of bees in Belgium
Since this investigation, the apiarian landscape evolved/moved much in Belgium, in particular under the impulse of the CURRY. It is the bee buckfast which profited from professionalism more developed of the bee-keepers Walloon and of Brussels because it acts of an already selected race. In same time, the asbl Mellifica was born in order to develop the black bee near the bee-keepers - they are numerous - attaches with the local bee and the regional inheritance. For them, it is more important to work in harmony with nature, with a bee of their area, rustic and sparing, rather than to produce a little more honey.
Certain areas were relatively preserved crossings and the livestock was degraded less there. It is the case of the province of Hainaut, and in particular of the boot of Hainaut, but more generally of the south of the Between-Sambre-and-Meuse. It is in this area that is established the school of bee-keeping of the south-Hainaut and the asbl Mellifica.
Garnery, geneticist of the populations at CNRS (Gif-sur-Yvette, France) was interested in the population of the south-Hainaut. Its results are presented on the chart below (but for more details, to consult the genetic heading).
ring: colony whose ascending females always were
of black race star: colony whose ascending females were not
always of black race
The data of the chart indicate the result of an analysis of the ADN mitochondrial. That gives information on the maternal line. The blue circles indicate that the colony always had the ascending ones of black race. On the other hand, the stars show a colony which, one day, had for ascending a "nonblack" queen. Thus, the rate of introgression (rate of penetration of the "nonblack" races) rises to approximately 14 %. These results are completely surprising and encouraging. Indeed, after a few decades only, one does not find practically any more trace of the Italian queens introduced into the colonies of the area. The black bee ends up taking again the top. The foreign bees can survive only with the massive support of the bee-keepers. Other similar and such spectacular situations were highlighted, for example in Morocco.
Other scientific results (nuclear ADN) indicate that the current situation arises in a way even more favorable than lets it foresee this chart which rests only on the studies of ADN mitochondrial.