Hi,
I'm a member of Zwartebij.org. Zwartebij.org get's more and more active members. One of them has a holiday home in the Ardeche. He has bees in Belgium and in the Ardeche. Last year in the Ardeche there arrived a swarm in a Warré which looked really dark. They didn't swarm this year and he sent me some dead bees to meausure the wing indexes. The bees all looked really dark and I'm very glad with the wing results from a unknown local swarm.
Dylan Elen, president of Zwartebij.org is going to test DNA of the bees, nuclear and maybe mtDNA. So I'm looking forward to the results.
Soon I will write about the Dutch Texel Dark bees.
Mathijs