Our Bees

Genetically, our bees are from numerous sources, New World Carniolan, Mike Palmer, VSH daughters from VP Queens, Harbo, and Harris, as well as the local bees. Carniolan bees are darker colored, and the local bees often are more yellow. In the past we had up to 18 different sources of bees represented in our production colonies and nucs.  We raise queens from the colonies that show the best characteristics of mite tolerance, honey production, and gentle temperament. We have 70 to 80 production colonies and about 50 to 75 overwintered nucs to select from. In 2019 we started adding New World Carniolan queens to our program.  These bees are prolific during the productive spring season, easy to work, and thrifty when there is no nectar flow.  They are a great compliment to the lines we have. In addition, there are many Italian type queens in the local population.  The end result is that our bees are mutts.  Virgin queens will mate with roughly 10 to 25 drones in the local area.  Because of this, each colony has a combination of many traits that are derived from the drones' and the queen's heritage.  All of our locally raised queens are open mated at our yards in the Blacksburg, VA area.  As a way to add diversity, we bring in queens from beekeepers who breed for traits that we would like to have in our colonies.

Honey production is an important part of sustaining our beekeeping operation.  Colonies that can not produce large enough populations to produce excess honey do not survive in the wild.  Because of this critical characteristic of the honey bee, we strive to keep strong productive colonies.  The best of these will be included in our breeding program.

A very productive Carniolan type queen.