Ape Nera del Ponente Ligure

The Ponente is a thin strip between the western Ligurian beaches and the crest of the Maritime Alps that marks the French and Piedmontese border, cut by long narrow valleys, much of it wild and hard to reach. What arable land there is was taken off the rock as terraces, the fasce or maixei, and it still reads as an act of stubbornness. Along this border two subspecies meet, the blonde Apis mellifera ligustica native to the peninsula and the black Apis mellifera mellifera out of France; they have been hybridising naturally here for millennia, and the Ligurian bee is the result.