ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that there is little connection between laboratory studies of mitochondrial DNA molecules and the biogeography of free-living honey bee populations. However animal mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) has a number of properties that make it a favorite tool of systematists and population biologists, and study of mtDNA has given biologists new insights into the systematics, biogeography and population biology of many taxa, including the genus Apis. Mitochondria, the organelles responsible for aerobic metabolism in eucaryotic cells, possess their own small DNA molecules or chromosomes, distinct from the chromosomes of the cell nucleus. The mitochondrial lineages within each species, and their geographic distributions support some of the traditional Apis spubspecies, but not all. Differences among subspecies within each lineage are more difficult to detect, at least in the eastern Mediterranean samples examined.
