Small hive beetle (Aethina tumida Murray, 1867) (SHB) is one of the important pests of bee keeping industry. This species is endemic in sub-Saharan region of Africa that has recently became an invasive and distributing rapidly throughout the world. Recent detections of SHB in Philippines, Brazil and South Korea indicate that SHB has the potential to become a global pest for apiculture and wild bees. Having enough knowledge about the population source of invasion can help understand the pest ecology and develop the control tactics. SHB has invaded to South Korea in 2017 and cause heavy damage to apiaries in Miryang City, in south-eastern part of Korea and the origin of this pest is still unknown. The aim of this study is to evaluate the phylogenetic position and origin of Korean population of SHB. We sampled the SHB from different bee hives in Miryang city and used 922 bp part of cytochrome oxidase subunit 1 (CO1) region of mitochondrial DNA to compare with all previously reported COI sequences of SHB. The result showed that the population of SHB in south Korea is classified with South Africa, Zimbabwe, Madagascar, Canada, Australia and USA populations in one clade and among them, the lowest genetic distance between South Korean and USA populations indicated that most likely the SHB was imported from the United states to South Korea. No genetic difference has been detected between studied sequences from Korean population indicating that the invasion would had happen in one occasion.

• Saeed Mohamadzade Namin(Agricultural Science and Technology Institute, Andong National University/Department of Plant protection, Faculty of Agriculture, Varamin-Pishva Branch, Islmic Azad University)
• Youngho Koh(Department of Bio-Medical Gerontology, Ilsong Institute of Life Sciences, Hallym University)
• Chuleui Jung(Agricultural Science and Technology Institute, Andong National University/Department of Plant Medicals, Andong National University)