By Brian Rohan PARIS, Oct 23 (Reuters) - After surviving the ice age, parasites and insecticides, French honey bees are now under threat from placid foreigners. Apis Mellifera Mellifera, the native subspecies also known as the dark bee, is losing out to central and eastern European breeds because beekeepers find them easier to handle and less likely to sting. Lionel Garnery, a bee specialist at the University of Versailles and a champion of Gallic bees, estimates the dark bee makes up around 75 percent of stocks in France after being totally dominant in the late 1980s. "If too many are imported, in certain regions, we risk causing the disappearance of local stocks that are best adapted to local ecosystems," Garnery said. The rival Apis Mellifera Carnica and Apis Mellifera Caucasica bees are known for their calm temperaments. "Beekeepers like them simply because they can be treated less delicately than some of the domestic stocks," Garnery said. Successive beekeeping crises, caused by parasites and insecticides, decimated dark bee stocks and apiculturists seized the chance to bring in overseas competition. The foreign bees are also tougher, making them doubly seductive when the beekeeping business is in a phase of consolidation as cheaper imported honey weighs on the domestic market. "Professionals have always preferred more prolific breeds compared to the dark bee, which has several vulnerabilities," said Thierry Fedon, one of France's largest bee breeders. "But I don't think its survival is threatened -- we are only talking about certain honey-producing regions and the dark bee does rather well on its own in nature." Raymond Borneck disagrees. A former head of beekeeping professional and technical associations whose career dates back to 1946, Borneck says the dark bees' future is "more or less a lost cause". "Apiculturists must continue to survive and I think they will be using these other races more and more," he said. Garnery, who builds sanctuaries for Apis Mellifera Mellifera, understands why beekeepers are switching allegiance. "If a beekeeper can spend 30 seconds to open each hive instead of two minutes -- after 2,000 hives he will have saved some time," he said. The answer may be for the dark bee to chill out. Garnery says some dark bee varieties disprove the subspecies' reputation for hostility and he wants to build up stocks of these cool-tempered native bees. "We have to remind the industry that certain stocks of the dark bee can be just as calm and productive," he said.
