The existence of the autochthonous honey bees of Syria, Lebanon, Palestinian Authority, Israel and Jordan, Apis mellifera syriaca, is endangered by persistent honey bee imports of commercial breeder lines into the region. We investigated 26 colonies from 12 locations in Jordan by morphometric methods in comparison to reference samples of 7 relevant subspecies. Results showed, that samples from Jordan were, on average, not identical but more similar to reference samples of A. m. syriaca collected in 1952 than to any of the other subspecies. We determined sample locations of highest similarity to serve as source populations for a project in agrobiodiversity conservation.
