IF YOU ARE SHIPPING YOU MUST SELECT FLAT RATE SHIP IN THE CART OR YOUR ORDER WILL BE CANCELED.
Alaska and Hawaii orders please select “Local Pickup” and add this link for shipping checkout ($130).
Pick-Up Day and Time
Made available on a as ordered basis. Customers will be contacted by the breeder to arrange for local pickups.
Shipping
Queens will ONLY be shipped via UPS Next Day Air. Be sure to select this option at checkout. Any orders with another form of shipment selected will be cancelled. Queens can only be shipped within the United States.
Inseminated VSH Queens
These queens are inseminated from queens that have met the selection criteria of the Northern Queen Initiative. These queens have been sourced/inseminated from queen and drone mother colonies of the highest degree of VSH and tested via the Harbo assay to determine the percentage of VSH. The Northern Queen Initiative only selects queens that score a “4” or are considered to convey a high degree of the alleles for varroa-sensitive hygiene. VSH selected queens do not represent any special breed, race, or pedigreed line. Their purpose is to transfer varroa resistance to the customer’s bee population.
The breeder queen’s daughters will produce varroa-resistant colonies — even if those daughter queens mate with a customer’s drones that do not carry the VSH alleles. Moreover, all the drones produced in colonies headed by a daughter queen will produce drones that carry all of the VSH alleles, further contributing to the spread of VSH. (Modified version of text taken from: https://www.harbobeeco.com/)
Laying II Breeder Queens
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Established: These queens have begun oviposition (egg-laying), confirming successful insemination and spermatheca fertilization.
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Evaluated: Their brood pattern, temperament, and colony development can be assessed before use or distribution.
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Preferred for grafting: They’re often favored for producing daughter queens, as their performance traits are more reliably expressed.
Not Yet Laying II Breeder Queens – Non Refundable and Not Guaranteed
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Recently Inseminated: These queens may still be in the post-insemination recovery phase and not yet accepted by the colony or ready to lay.
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Unverified: Their fertility and mating success are not confirmed until they begin laying; there’s a higher risk of rejection or failure.
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Used for banking or intro: Often kept banked or introduced into colonies for observation before being used as breeders.
What is the significance of VSH?
A valuable feature of VSH is that bees will express a high level of mite resistance when a colony contains as little as 50% of the alleles for VSH. A simple way to produce such a colony is to raise daughter queens from a VSH breeder and allow the daughters to naturally mate. This is good news for queen producers. They can rear VSH queens, mate them to any drones, and those queens will produce colonies that require no chemical control for varroa. Another benefit is that beekeepers can have mite-resistant colonies without destroying their existing bee populations –populations that may be well adapted to certain locales or have desirable beekeeping qualities. (Taken from: https://www.harbobeeco.com/vsh/)