BAL ARISI IRKLARININ ÇEŞİTLİLİĞNİNİN KORUNMASI, KOLONİLERİN YÖNETİMİ VE GENETİK YAPILARININ İSTENEN YÖNDE GELİŞTİRİLMESİ ÜZERİNE MODEL OLUŞTURULMASI.

Colony management and stock improvement are very important issues of beekeeping. We can improve important economic genetic characters of honey bees by using breeding techniques. This subject is especially important for the countries that have their own honey bee subspecies for keeping their genetic resources and stock improvement. Programs for honey bee breeding in other countries such as United States of America and members of the European Union have targeted resistance to American and European foul brood, chalk brood, Nosema diseases, Varroa, tracheal mite, and increase in high honey production, decrease in swarm tendency in bee stocks and lines. Colony management, queen bee rearing and instrumental insemination techniques are the core tools for genetic improvement in beekeeping sector. Turkey has a special position in the world because of colony numbers and honey bee genetic diversity. Turkey has over 4 million colonies, making it the second country with the highest number of colonies in the world. Diverse and differentially adapted honey bee genetic sources in Turkey has been of interest for scientists and beekeepers from other countries. A famous example is the use of Apis mellifera bees from Sinop province by Brother Adam in production of the commercial line of bees known as Buckfast. Brother Adam, in his book of 1987 recognizes this bee as Anatolian bee (Apis mellifera anatolica) and tells to be better in many characteristics than other bees. However, Anatolian bee is only one of at least 5 subspecies present in Turkey, each with particular habits that are important for local adaptation. In this article I discuss importance of protecting diversity of native honey bee subspecies, colony management system and closed population breeding techniques. Lastly a model (See Figure 1) is proposed where an expert team provides the link between a conservation population for a local race (Yerli Irk I in Figure 1) and a closed breeding population of the same race (Yerli Irk II in Figure 1). The conservation population is maintained with the aim of preserving the genetic diversity and traits of the particular race or subspecies. The breeding population is maintained with the aim of producing breeder queen bees with improved commercial traits for the benefit of the beekeepers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]