About Our Stock

Breaking Free from Pesticide Dependency

We have been providing honeybees in the form of nucleus colonies (“nucs”) to local folks who need bees since 2011. Customers continue to report great success, productivity, and gentleness from our stock.

One of our primary selection criteria has been varroa resistance. There are many traits through which honey bees can deal with varroa mites. Regardless of the methods and traits involved, such as brood development time, varroa sensitive hygiene, mite biting, altruistic sacrifice of infested bees, or other traits not yet understood, the important thing is that the bees maintain low mite levels.  At Honey Glen we regularly track the mite levels of our colonies to select those with the lowest levels for breeding. We have also selected for mite-biting behavior, in which the bees actually bite the legs off the mites, and have found this trait to be strong in some of our breeder colonies. By starting with the most mite-resistant stock we could find, we did not need thousands of colonies to begin our breeding process.

Carefully-selected Queens

Varroa resistance is only part of the picture. Our selection criteria also includes gentleness, vigor, productivity, and wintering ability. The bees we breed from have been raised here in the mountains for many generations. Our breeding areas are isolated enough from other beekeepers that we are able to allow natural mating of queens and provide drone yards to maintain control over the breeding process. 

Our bees have been practically free of all mite treatments since 2010 and during the same time period our average winter losses have been below 35%. All tests have shown our colonies to be free of Nosema, and we have never had Chalkbrood or American Foulbrood in any of our colonies. If we encounter a brood issue like EFB, we have found re-queening, shook swarms, and sanitation to work better than antibiotics. Our hives are inspected by the WV Department of Agriculture annually.

We believe that the beekeeping industry will never break free from dependence on pesticides if we continue using them. Furthermore, we have a hunch that treating for mites tends to select for more aggressive mites and more susceptible bees over time. According to Bee Informed Partnership, the threshold at which mites destroy a colony has been getting lower; in other words it takes fewer mites to damage a colony now than in the past. We would like to use nutrition and genetics to do as much of the mite-fight as possible.