Kingdom Animalia Class Insecta Genus Apis | Phylum Arthropoda Order Hymenoptera Rank Subspecies | |
Similar Caucasian honey bee, Apis mellifera intermissa, Apis mellifera cecropia, Apis mellifera macedonica, Apis mellifera unicolor | ||
Apis mellifera anatoliaca is known commonly as the Anatolian honey bee.
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This bee-type is a sub-species of Apis mellifera.
Habitat
This bee is the aboriginal population of Turkey, populating the central parts of the country (Alpatov 1929), excluding the north-eastern and south-eastern, although including old Rumelia.
Taxonomy
This bee type belongs to the branch of bee classified by Ruttner (1988) as "Oriental". A recent genetic study confirmed that the sub-species belongs to an Eastern Europe branch of the genotype of the honey bee. Mitochondrial Deoxyribonucleaic acid (mtDNA) analysis of Thracian bees showed some similarities to the Apis mellifera carnica, although this same similarity was absent from Anatolian bee samples (Smith and Brown(1990)& Meixner et al. (1993). The cause of this is given as inter-breeding of native populations with nearby Austrian, Slovakian and Croatian bees.