Within biological taxonomy, a honey bee race would be an informal rank in the taxonomic hierarchy, below the level of subspecies.
[1][2] Therefore, a strain (within the honey bee context) is a lower-level taxonomic rank used at the intraspecific level within a race of a subspecies.
[5][6] The races of the honey bee are classified into various named instances of an informal taxonomic rank of race—below that of subspecies—on the basis of shared genetic traits.
To make things even more complicated, a queen will normally mate multiple times, the spermatozoa from which are retained within her body, meaning that workers may only be half-sisters to each other, and their colors and other characteristics may differ.
In the Americas, there has been a great deal of interbreeding of subspecies, since all honey bees were imported at some point after 1492 and the subsequent Columbian Exchange.