Evaluation of the genetic diversity of honey bees, Apis mellifera L. in the Walloon Region and selection of strains tolerant to the mite Varroa destructor Anderson and Trueman

For more than a decade, high losses of honey bee colonies have been noticed in several countries, including Belgium. Currently often the mite Varroa destructor is considered a main threat for beekeeping. In view of the inefficiency of the current chemical treatments, one of the solutions is to select honey bees tolerant to this parasite using genomic selection. To reach this objective the genetic diversity of honey bees needs first to be studied using mainly ‘Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms’ (SNP). Records and samples will be collected all over the Walloon Region in order to create an informative phenotypic and genomic data base that will be used for ‘Genome Wide Association Studies’ (GWAS) to detect associations between SNPs and tolerance, and to select bees tolerant to Varroa destructor.