The Associació d’Apicultors d’Eivissa‘s efforts to revive the native Ibizan bee species have shown promising results. After a five-year initiative focusing on breeding and reproduction, a study by the Escola Superior Agraria of Instituto Politécnico de Bragança in Portugal confirmed that nine out of ten randomly tested colonies retained the A1 mitochondrial DNA characteristic of the Ibizan bee. This species, distinguished by its dark color, smaller size, and high productivity, had nearly vanished in the 1990s due to foreign species introduction and a varroa mite epidemic. The association now plans to expand this success throughout Ibiza, starting with replacing all colonies in Camp d’Aprenentatge de Sant Vicent de sa Cala with this native species, aiming for island-wide recovery within a decade. This initiative comes as part of a broader effort to restore the bee population, which had suffered greatly from climate impacts and the introduction of non-native species.
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