The indigenous, Maltese honeybee, Apis Mellifera Ruttneri, has evolved to live in perfect harmony with the local environment. Foreign apicultural experts are full of praise for this sub-species and strongly urge us, Maltese beekeepers, to protect and promote it as its potential has as yet to be fully appreciated. According to a 2014 University of Malta study, 83 per cent of the bees in the 2,000 beehives in Malta and Gozo have the Ruttneri DNA.
Recently an Italian bee breeder brought 450 hives of disease-free foreign bees and established them in Gozo. It is said that the final number may reach 9,000 hives. This massive intrusion will saturate our skies with male bees carrying alien DNA (queen bees mate in flight), producing hybrids leading eventually to the loss of our beloved, hardworking Maltese honeybee.
According to a recent report in Times of Malta, Parliamentary Secretary for Animal Rights Roderick Galdes does not seem to worry that the Maltese honeybee may face extinction.
To counteract this menace, we beekeepers can gear up our hives to produce a huge number of males with the Ruttneri DNA. Such hives will not produce any honey. So the amount of genuine Malta honey on the market will decrease drastically, causing its market price to soar.
These large-scale producers of fertile queen bees or package bees (small bee colonies) for export require a huge bee population in their hives. To achieve this they do not rely on the limited natural flora, but feed their hives artificially with sugar syrup. If extra feed is given, bees may store it as ‘honey’. Should this so-called honey find itself on the market and be mistakenly labelled as ‘Gozo honey’ customers may quite rightly start to mistrust all honey labelled as Gozo Honey.
As I have indicated, the aim of this enterprise is to produce fertile queen bees from this foreign stock.
These queen bees may cross breed with the Ruttneri males, producing hybrids. Experience has shown that when there is cross-breeding between the Maltese A. M. Ruttneri and the docile Italian bee A. M. Ligustica, the resulting hybrid is an aggressive bee. The same may occur if there is cross-breeding with the imported French queens.
It is evident that this project will fail on many counts but our Parliamentary Secretary for Animal Rights says our alarm is unjustified.
Should he have second thoughts, he should visit the site https://secure.org.avaaz.org/en/petition/The_Malta_Government_Save_the_endemic_honeybee_Apis_mellifera_Ruttneri/ , and perhaps sign the petition.