the bees". A 2014 European wide survey, which covered 621 colonies, found that the A. m. mellifera from Læsø had the lowest hygienic behaviour of all bees tested, (a trait closely linked with Varroa sensitive hygiene) which would make them more susceptible to varroa mites. Islands of Colonsay and Oronsay In 2013 the Scottish Government introduced the Bee Keeping (Colonsay and Oronsay) Order, making it an offence to keep any other honeybee (Apis mellifera) on either island other than the subspecies Apis mellifera mellifera. The Environment and Climate Change Minister said at the time, "The Bee Keeping Order illustrates how our non-native species legislation can be used to protect our native wildlife. The order is a targeted measure to protect an important population of black bees on Colonsay from hybridisation" (the "non-native species legislation" was used because Apis mellifera are considered to be non-native to Colonsay, but considered native to Scotland as it was the first honey bee to be introduced for use in beekeeping). The islands are home to fifty to sixty beehives (a minimum of fifty colonies of unrelated bees are required to prevent inbreeding) and are referred to now as the "Colonsay Dark Native Bee" even though they were collected from across Scotland in the previous thirty years and genetic analysis has shown introgression from Australian and New Zealand A. m. ligustica. In 2018 it was claimed by the Galtee Bee Breeding Group (GBBG) based in Ireland in County Tipperary that they had "sent bees to Colonsay", earlier DNA evidence had confirmed a genetic link between the two populations. In the media In the documentary More than Honey, the bee kept and bred by Swiss-German beekeeper Fred Jaggi was A. m. mellifera, referred to as the "local black breed", in which he strives to maintain "racially pure" bees, lamenting when he discovers yellow coloration in the colony of one of his queens, meaning that she has bred with a drone from a different sub-species and produced "little half-breeds", she is subsequently killed; we see in the documentary his pure bees succumbing to a brood disease and having to be gassed, then burned: Jaggi abandons the local black bees and the goal of racial purity, choosing A. m. carnica bees instead, with an apiary that includes hybrids to enhance genetic diversity, which are found to be "more disease resistant". In 2012 a story began to circulate online and