Determining genetic diversity of a wild and managed population of honey bees (Apis mellifera) in south Texas

Honey bees (Apis mellifera) contribute $16 billion dollars annually to the world’s economy. Despite their importance, we see annual losses of managed populations around 30% due to pests, parasites, and pathogens. Managed honey bees are also faced with additional threats through human managed and selective breeding, which could cause the loss of genetic diversity. One avenue that has been understudied are populations of wild honey bee that are scattered throughout the U.S. They live without any human intervention as such they have been allowed to locally-adapt to their environmental conditions and are not put under any selective breeding. A large population of wild honey bees located at the Welder Wildlife Refuge (WWR) near Sinton, Texas, has been studied over the last thirty years to better understand the biology of these unmanaged colonies. For this study, I aim to further characterize the genetics of this population of wild honey bees at WWR. I will do so by determining the genome-wide population structure of unmanaged bees. We currently have sequence results from 2013, 2016, 2021, and 2022 from the WWR population. In addition, we have sequence results from a nearby managed apiary in 2021 and 2022 for comparison. We plan to return in 2023 to sample again form both WWR and the nearby managed apiary.