Ordering Portal

The Queen Portal has a new look for 2026. Please follow the links below to purchase queens.

Please order from one of the breeders below. Not all breeders ship. All breeders will ship queens overnight AIR via UPS. Each breeders shipping and pickup dates vary based on individual. Orders are delivered via UPS overnight air at flat rate fees selected in the checkout. Stock levels and pickup times may vary for each breeder, be sure to read all product descriptions. Questions, email us!

Published research supports the claim that queens from VSH-selected stock can pass on useful mite-resistance traits, even when naturally mated in typical commercial conditions. The strongest evidence does not support guaranteeing that every daughter queen will produce a resistant colony in every apiary. However, selected stock can improve the odds of reduced mite growth and better colony performance, but expression will vary with mating, environment, and management. To read more about the NQI’s claims concerning mite-resistant stocks and using virgin queen daughters CLICK HERE.

Our NQI breeder and production stock is grafted only from queens that meet rigorous Northern Queen Initiative selection standards. These queens come from colonies demonstrating treatment-free survival, successful overwintering, low mite burden, and strong performance in simplified Harbo and pin-killed brood assays. When available, instrumental insemination is used to improve mating control and better concentrate selected traits. Rather than representing a closed breed or branded line, this stock reflects deliberate selection for heritable varroa-resistant and hygienic traits that can strengthen the customer’s population over time.

F1 queens are the first-generation daughters of this selected breeding stock. Under open mating, they still serve as an effective vehicle for moving desirable genetics into local apiaries: their worker offspring inherit roughly half of their genome from the selected queen line, while the drones they produce carry only the queen’s maternal genome. This gives breeders and beekeepers a practical way to spread selected traits through a population, while recognizing that field expression will always depend on mating conditions, local genetics, and continued selection pressure.

Need more data? Here are some helpful links from the venerable Tom Glenn, a distinguished queen breeder.

• Principles of Honey Bee Genetics
• VSH Breeder Queens
• Polygenic Traits of the Honey Bee