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Assessing patterns of admixture and ancestry in Canadian honey bees

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Abstract

Canadian honey bees, like all honey bees in the New World, originated from centuries of importation of predominately European subspecies, but their precise genetic ancestry has not been investigated. We used a citizen science approach that engaged a diverse group of beekeepers to undertake the largest population genetic study of Canadian honey bees. We used the dataset to characterize the ancestry of Canadian honey bee populations, test if Northern Canadian colonies have a greater proportion of ancestry from subspecies native to Northern Europe, and determine the effectiveness of using single nucleotide polymorphism (SNPs) to distinguish between Canadian bees and the aggressive and invasive Africanized honey bee found from South America to the Southern United States. We genotyped 855 worker honey bees at 91 ancestrally informative SNPs and found very low levels of genetic differentiation within Canada at these SNPs and small but significant differences in ancestry between provinces. Honey bee populations in Northern and Western Canada were more closely related to subspecies from Southern and Mediterranean Europe. We attributed this pattern to differences in importation practices within Canada. Finally, we were able to accurately discriminate between Africanized bees and Canadian bees using the ancestrally informative SNPs, supporting the use of SNPs for accurately detecting Africanized honey bees and providing valuable insights into the genetic structure of Canadian bees, all while engaging beekeepers in the scientific process.

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Acknowledgments

This project was partially supported by a NSERC Discovery grant, a grant from the Bee Research Fund (Canadian Honey Council and the Canadian Association of Professional Apiculturists), and an Early Researcher Award from the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation (A.Z.). B.A.H. was supported by an NSERC Alexander Graham Bell Graduate Scholarship and York University Elia Research Scholarship. N.C. and B.P.O. received funding from Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation PRJ-007774. V.S., L.K., P.M. were supported by NSERC Undergraduate Student Research Awards and the Research at York program. We thank Génome Québec's Innovation Centre for their continued excellent service, Dr. Gard Otis (University of Guelph) for helpful discussion on the history of Buckfast breeding in Ontario, and Canadian beekeepers for their support and interest in this work.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, York University, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto, ON, M3J 1P3, Canada

    B. A. Harpur, L. Krimus, P. Maciukiewicz, V. Sandhu, K. Sood & A. Zayed

  2. Behaviour and Genetics of Social Insects Lab, School of Biological Sciences A12, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, 2006, Australia

    N. C. Chapman, J. Lim & B. P. Oldroyd

  3. Honey-Bee Breeding, Genetics and Physiology Research Laboratory, USDA-ARS, 1157 Ben Hur Road, Baton Rouge, LA, 70820, USA

    T. E. Rinderer

  4. ARC-Plant Protection Research Institute, Stellenbosch, 7599, South Africa

    M. H. Allsopp

Authors
  1. B. A. Harpur
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  2. N. C. Chapman
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  3. L. Krimus
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  4. P. Maciukiewicz
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  5. V. Sandhu
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  6. K. Sood
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  7. J. Lim
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  8. T. E. Rinderer
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  9. M. H. Allsopp
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  10. B. P. Oldroyd
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  11. A. Zayed
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to A. Zayed.

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Figure 1

Evanno’s Method for the identification of K, following STRUCTURE analyses, showing optimal K=3 populations. (PDF 9 kb)

Figure 2

Average admixture (1 - maximum ancestry; e.g. if 70% C, 20% M, and 10% A, then admixture = 1-0.7) of each Canadian Province represented in our study. (PDF 5 kb)

Figure 3

Proportion of ancestry derived from each major lineage within each pooled Canadian province: Prairie Provinces (Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba), Western Provinces and Territories (Yukon and British Columbia), Ontario and Quebec, and the Maritimes (Newfoundland, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia). High C (low M) ancestry is more common in the Prairie Provinces than in the Western Provinces Quebec and Ontario, and Maritime Provinces, which had significantly lower C ancestry (PDF 5 kb)

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Harpur, B.A., Chapman, N.C., Krimus, L. et al. Assessing patterns of admixture and ancestry in Canadian honey bees. Insect. Soc. 62, 479–489 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00040-015-0427-1

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