Abstract
The honey bee (Apis mellifera L.) from Socotra archipelago (Yemen) has been characterized based on 32 morphometrical characters and on the sequence analysis of the tRNAleu - COII intergenic region of the mtDNA. Morphometric clustering by discriminant analysis grouped almost all honey bees from Socotra (93.8%) with Apis mellifera litorea Smith reference samples; however one of these samples was allocated with Apis mellifera jemenitica Runner (6.2%). Consistently, sequences of the tRNAleu - COII intergenic region of the Socotran samples (n = 2) were identical with Somalian honey bee (Acc: Old FJ477995, A. m. litorea), and the sequences had a Po element and one sequence repeat of the Q element. This indicates that the honey bee from Socotra belongs to the Z subgroup of the A lineage (formerly was part of the O lineage). Morphometric and sequence analyses clearly supports the statement that the native honey bee of Socotra is not the same as the bees called A. m. jemenitica from, Ethiopia, Yemen, Chad, Oman, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Uganda, and Sudan, which were used as reference samples in this study.