You have probably heard that the honey bees of Kangaroo Island in South Australia are a special breed of ‘Ligurian’ Italian bees. Liguria is the coastal region of Italy nearest to France and Monaco. History has it that Black Bees, likely from England, were introduced to Kangaroo Island in the early 1800s. Italian bees were introduced much later in the 1880s. Some of these latter introductions came directly from Italy and indirectly via Brisbane. The bees from Brisbane may have mated with Black drones, which were common all over Australia at the time. The ‘Ligurian Bee Sanctuary’ was proclaimed in 1885 by an Act of the South Australian parliament, in order to maintain the purity of the Italian bees on [...]