In a groundbreaking programme funded by the Hellenic Agricultural Organisation, ELGO-Dimitra, bees resistant to the new conditions brought about by climate change and to illnesses such as the parasitic disease of varroosis have been propagated on Crete’s southernmost outpost of Gavdos. A pilot apiary set up by ELGO-Dimitra with the aim of producing a Greek species of honeybee with hybrid characteristics has been completely successful, providing encouraging data for beekeepers, according to a report in Haniotika Nea.
“We want to help the honey producers and to improve the genetic material so that we have bees which are well-adapted and healthy and which have better resistance to pests and to illnesses such as varroosis, which we currently treat with antibiotics,” says Fani Hatzina, Director of the Research Institute of Animal Husbandry Science, which is one of 11 institutes run by ELGO-Dimitra.
In the past five years researchers at the apiary on Gavdos have made a great effort to identify the mechanisms in the native bee population which keep the scourge of varroosis at low levels. “There are ways of developing these bees so that they can be propagated and this we have done successfully on Gavdos,” Ms Hatzina told the paper. “The programme began three years ago and we succeeded in producing robust bees which have survived bee-eating wasps, reduced nutrition and increased temperatures without having to be treated for varroosis.
“The programme is funded by the Cretan Regional Authority and we are going to ask for the funding to be extended so that we can reach our goal. That is to preserve and propagate this population so as to arrive at the point where we can say that the genetic material which we give to the producer will have demonstrable indications of resilience. It is local, Cretan, the best there is in Crete and resistant to varroosis. We will need another four years to have 100 per cent positive results,” she concluded.
The beekeepers
The beekeepers who are participating in the programme are doing so on a voluntary basis, with some of their costs being covered. One of them, the former mayor of Gavdos Geli Kallinikou, told the paper that goats are a major problem:
“They don’t leave anything for the bees, because in the climate crisis the goats too cannot find anything to eat. Now they don’t even let the dandelions come out and the bees survive with whatever plants they can find in fenced areas. Fortunately there are some landowners who have made land available so that we can fence it and bee-friendly plants can be grown there,” she said.
“The results have been very positive. The bee colonies are on the island, we have not used any chemicals and they have survived without antibiotics, which is very encouraging,” said another beekeeper, Ilias Halakatevakis, who is a former president of the Chania Beekeepers Association. According to him the biggest issue preoccupying the participants in the programme is the weather conditions on the island.
“There is a major drought and little rainfall. In 2022 we had 130 mm of rain, which for Gavdos is an achievement but for us is a catastrophe. Both I and other colleagues and Ms Hatzina are working for this programme without taking any payment apart from our expenses, when we got them, and for the past year and a half we haven’t even had that! We hope that the Regional Authority will cover the cost of continuing the programme with a running agreement,” the beekeeper said.
He emphasised that after the onset of varroosis in the 80s and the tracheal acariasis [an internal mite of the bees’ respiratory system] which followed, 80 per cent of the Cretan bee population (Apis mellifera adami) was wiped out and there was major importation of bees and queens from northern Greece and abroad. With this programme here is the hope that a local variety of bees will be re-established whose chief characteristic will be its pest- and disease-resistance.
(Haniotika Nea, 28/02/24)
The Cretan honey bee
The western honey bee Apis mellifera is the most common of the 7-12 species of honey bees worldwide. It was one of the first domesticated insects, and is the main species kept by beekeepers to this day, for both honey production and pollination. Its temporal range is given as Oligocene to Recent, which means that it has been present on earth for at least 23 million years, and it is now found on every continent except Antarctica.
Honey production was important on Crete as far back as Minoan times, as evidenced by a gold brooch depicting two honey bees, found at the necropolis at Malia and dated as from 1800 to 1700 BC, which is in the Archaeological Museum at Heraklion. The Cretan subspecies Apis mellifera adami was classified in 1975 by the Austrian biologist Friedrich Ruttner who named it after Brother Adam, otherwise Karl Kehrle, who was a Benedictine monk, beekeeper, and an authority on bee breeding.
Born in Germany Kehrle spent most of his life at the Benedictine monastery of Buckfast Abbey in Devon, in the UK, becoming a member of the Order in his teens and starting to to keep bees in 1915. He is known for his creation through selective breeding of the Buckfast Bee, which was resistant to a parasite which had decimated British bee colonies from 1913 onwards.
According to Wikipedia, research in 2003 concluded that the honey bee from Crete seemed to be similar to the honey bee populations from other areas of Greece while acknowledging that their genetic structures had most likely been changed over the past two decades due to migratory beekeeping and commercial breeding, and concluding that there seemed to be no pure populations of Apis mellifera adami left on the island.