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🐝 Conserving Rare and Heritage Honey Bee Breeds

An interactive 3D conservation apiary: control isolation distance, colony numbers and a protected mating station, then watch genetic purity, diversity and inbreeding risk evolve across generations for a rare heritage honey bee breed.

Ecology & Conservation Biology3DModerate60 FPS

A 3D conservation apiary where heritage colonies (dark hives) sit inside a ring of commercial apiaries (amber hives), with drones and queens meeting in a shared mating cloud overhead.

🔬 What It Demonstrates

Genetic purity depends on isolating heritage queens from foreign drones, while genetic diversity and inbreeding risk depend on keeping the conservation population large enough — the two competing pressures every heritage-breed conservation programme must balance.

🎮 How to Use

Set the number of conservation colonies, the isolation distance from commercial apiaries, and how many generations to project forward. Toggle a controlled mating station to see how a protected drone congregation area rescues purity even at short distances.

💡 Did You Know?

Some conservation groups pair live "black bee" reserves with frozen drone semen gene banks, so diversity lost in a bad season can later be reintroduced from cryopreserved stock.

⚙ Under the hood

An interactive 3D conservation apiary where heritage colonies ring a central mating cloud shared with nearby commercial apiaries; sliders for colony numbers, isolation distance and generations, plus a protected mating-station toggle, drive live genetic purity, diversity and inbreeding-risk stats.

heritage-bee-breedsconservation-geneticsnative-black-beegene-banksbiodiversityapis-mellifera-mellifera

3D · Three.js / WebGL renderer · 60 FPS target · runs fully client-side, no install