Outside the Box Project
It was previously assumed that any remaining free-living/wild colonies of the Western honeybee, Apis mellifera, were wiped out in Europe as a consequence of the spread of Varroa destructor, an invasive parasite and vector of deadly honey bee viruses. Moreover, in Ireland, free-living populations of the native dark honey bee, A. m. mellifera, are considered extinct due to introgression and hybridization from other subspecies. However, our recent research contradicts these assumptions and shows that, in Ireland, colonies of pure A. m. mellifera are surviving in the wild, undisturbed, and often undiscovered.
With the Outside The Box project we aim to delve deeper into the question of how Irish free-living colonies are able to survive, unaided, outside of conventional beekeeping settings (i.e., hive boxes managed in apiaries).
This project is the first scientific program surveying and studying wild honey bee colonies on a national scale. Its completion will shed light onto the possible traits that are enabling long-term survival in free-living honey bee colonies and will provide invaluable results from which wild honey bee research and conservation will move forward.
WE ARE WORKING TOWARDS THREE WORK PACKAGES!
We will further develop citizen science tools previously built for the reporting of wild colonies to enable repeated and long-term nest monitoring combined with sampling and data collection. A specific communication campaign will be put in place to foster engagement with wild nests custodians, promote direct exchange with stakeholders and dissemination of scientific content.
Irish free-living colonies will be followed and studied in depth to validate and understand their survival. Samples from wild colonies will be compared to those from managed and historical ones. We will further explore the ecology of these colonies and assess pathogen type and load. Phenotypic adaptations will be investigated by comparing wild colonies morphological traits to those of bees from managed colonies or historical samples (circa. 1880). Furthermore, wild colonies genomics will be studied to isolate possible adaptations leading to longer survival.
Genomic analyses will be used to investigate the population genetics on over 200 colonies of wild Irish A. m. mellifera, such as diversity, population structure and introgression of non-native lineages, to understand their link to population fitness and survival.