even starting a "project to develop their own native breed of bee". Many promoters of the A. m. mellifera claim that the sub-specie is endangered and under threat from imports of even though DNA analysis has been able to show that the amount of non-A. m. mellifera DNA within local populations of A. m. mellifera remains relatively low, with an Irish survey showing that 97.8% of sampled bees were determined to be pure A. m. mellifera, a further study across eight northwest European countries showed that their A. m. mellifera populations were genetically pure. Nazi Germany In 1937 the Third Reich implemented nativist policies to protect and promote the A. m. mellifera, as an extension of their ideology of "Blood and Soil" (Blut und Boden - a Nazi slogan expressing a racially defined group pertaining to a geographic area), by banning imports of Honey Bees (Apis mellifera) and regulating the breeding of bees, in which only registered breeders at designated locations were permitted to rear queens to supply German beekeepers; however a limited dispensation was made for a minority of A. m. carnica beekeepers in southern Germany constituting only 13% overall. But after the annexation of Austria in 1938 the amount of A. m. carnica breeders increased to 31%. In 1939 actions were taken to reduce the numbers (by approximately 95%) of A. m. carnica being breed in Germany, resulting in the Native German Dark bee being promoted fore-mostly. Beekeeping literature at the time used the racial ideological vocabulary of the National Socialists (only in concentrated form), such as: "What is not race is chaff!" "Foreign drones are to be exterminated" and "But what use is it if one day a Jewish bastard (a German with Jewish ancestry) is a genius, but our ethnic purity is destroyed in the process (through inter-marriage). It is no different with beekeeping, what use is the importation of foreign breeds (sub-species)... if our (Native) German bee is lost in the process (through inter-breeding)". However starting in the winter of 1940 to 1942, beekeeping was devastated throughout Germany by huge colony deaths, later identified by Karl Von Frisch as a virulent strain of Nosema apis, through his work with the Nosema Council to try and tackle the problem; ironically it was this epidemic that saved Von Frisch from the Nazis' anti-semitic policies, as his maternal Grandmother was Jewish, making him "25% Jewish" ("75% German"). As