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Genetic Bottlenecks in Modern Beekeeping: Implications for Conservation and Sustainable Pollination

Zheguang Lin,Yan Zhang,Kang Wang,Xiasen Jiang,Ting Ji

Published 2025 in Conservation Letters

ABSTRACT

Honey bees (Apis mellifera) play pivotal roles in global ecosystem functioning, underpinning agricultural productivity and biodiversity maintenance through their pollination services. Over the past century, although advances in modern beekeeping have contributed to significant enhancement in hive output, efficiency, and economic viability, the relentless pursuit of optimized productivity and colony health has inadvertently intensified management dependencies, necessitating routine interventions such as artificial queen replacement, systematic queen rearing, and colony‐wide disease treatments. These practices have exacerbated the development of genetic bottlenecks, thereby reducing the capacity of honey bees to evolve resistance traits, owing to the loss of genetic variation. This, in turn, undermines long‐term colony resilience and adaptive potential, rendering honey bee populations increasingly susceptible to emerging biotic and abiotic threats. To address these challenges, sustainable apiculture demands a paradigm shift toward integrative conservation strategies that contribute to the preservation and enhancement of genetic diversity. This balanced approach should include expanding queen genetic foundations, establishing multi‐trait breeding objectives, implementing controlled introgression from wild populations, and adopting sustainable disease management, with the imperative of economic value, as well as strengthening stakeholder collaborations, to safeguard the health, resilience, and productivity of honey bee colonies worldwide.

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