A new study has shown that honeybees most likely began their species in Asia, not Africa, as was originally thought.

A research team from Uppsala University in Sweden studied the genome of the honeybee. They found a very high amount of genetic diversity among the species. They also found that the species generated in Asia, not Africa, as many believed.

Honeybees play a vital role in pollinating plants. More than a third of our food sources need bees for reproduction, such as fruits, vegetables and nuts. This makes the recent decline of the honeybee troubling. Scientists have been studying the bee to try to find out what might be causing the population decline. They hoped that by learning more about the honeybee's genetics, they could learn more about how to save them from possible extinction.

"We have used state-of-the-art high-throughput genomics to address these questions, and have identified high levels of genetic diversity in honeybees," said Matthew Webster, one of the Uppsala University researchers who worked on the study. "In contrast to other domestic species, management of honeybees seems to have increased levels of genetic variation by mixing bees from different parts of the world. The findings may also indicate that high levels of inbreeding are not a major cause of global colony losses."

One thing they discovered, a finding they weren't even looking for, was that honeybees seem to originate from Asia, not Africa. The species most likely descended from a species of cavity-nesting bees that lived in Asia over 300,000 years ago. The bees then spread to Europe and Africa.

"The evolutionary tree we constructed from genome sequences does not support an origin in Africa, this gives us new insight into how honeybees spread and became adapted to habitats across the world," Webster says.

The group also found from the genome that there have been fluctuations in bee population size that seem to line up with historic patterns of climate change. The bee populations in Europe likely grew smaller in ice ages, but the populations in Africa seem to have increased at the same times, Webster says.

They discovered important mutations in bees that helped them adapt to climate change.

"The study provides new insights into evolution and genetic adaptation, and establishes a framework for investigating the biological mechanisms behind disease resistance and adaptation to climate, knowledge that could be vital for protecting honeybees in a rapidly changing world," Webster says.