West Virgina Hybrid

[Ricko]

I see on the Strachan Apiaries website they speak of a West Virgina hybrid queen offering in limited supply. Yet I can't find anything on their site which describes these queens. I've also done a Beesource search without any luck.
What's the story on the West Virgina hybrid queens? Thank you

[ikeepbees]

Andy Webb at Calvert Apiaries in Calvert, AL used to offer the West Virginia queens, and he may still offer them. I bought a few of them with packages and found that they built up more quickly than the packages with his italian queens. I don't remember how they performed in the second season or how their daughters performed.

I don't know if this is the same strain as the one you found at Strachan.

http://maarec.cas.psu.edu/PDFs/Feb2000.pdf

[VABeeKEEPER]

The West Virginia Hybird Queen is a Carnoilan. They were developed in the West Virginia Beekeeper Research Program. The Beekeeper Research Program provides a quality assistance program for West Virginia's registered beekeepers and helps them maintain healthy productive colonies. Great bee; hygenic, gentle and a producer.

For more information about the Beekeeper Program, contact the WVDA’s Plant Industries Division, 304/558-2212, or by e-mail at gclutter@ag.state.wv.us.

[danno1800]

The WV Queen Breeding Project was started about 5 years ago. Participating beekeepers purchase the queens and they are then evaluated during the season by the state bee inspectors and judged on the usual criterion like gentleness, honey production, disease and mite resistance, etc. The top 4 queens each year are purchased from the beekeeper and used to produce the next generation. We started with Buckfast from Canada, and now use Strachan and Pendell, not Calvert, in order to cross them with New World Carniolans. I have used them for several years now and the improvement has been dramatic. This is part of an ongoing effort across the country to try and breed bees which are best adapted to local conditions. There is a small premium added to the price of each queen which supports the cost associated with managing the project. I hope that helps you understand the WV Queens offered by Strachan. Thanks for your interest!

[Pugs]

Danno1800,

Did I understand correctly that the WV bee has Buckfast and NWC in its pedigree?

Sounds interesting.

Pugs

[danno1800]

Yes, Pugs, we started with Buckfast because we were losing bees to tracheal mites. The Buckfast blood has practically eliminated them for us. Then we decided that it would be good to get New World Carniolan blood crossed into the WV Queen. The thought was that these were locally good queens [Dr. Cobey is just north of us in Columbus, Ohio] and are #1 or #2 on most of the lists of qualities and disease resistance [with Buckfast usually in the other position]. Last year we had our first queens with both blood in them and they were terrific! The state bee inspectors evaluated our 4 best queens to breed from and we are very hopeful that this year's queens will be even better. Hope that helps you understand what we are doing. Thanks for your interest! -Dan

[VABeeKEEPER]

Dan: As you know from my post, I have mine on order and am looking forward to it. I will let you know the outcome!

[topbee]

Ricko, I have found that all strains perform very differently depending upon the location they are placed. I would recommend you try a few, put them in a yard by themself and just give the a couple years to see how they do. That is how I went from using the straight italian to the buckfast, until they got to hot, but there is another topic. I have yards of all NWC, Italian, Russian and the swarms that I catch. I never keep different bees together is the same yard. In the swarm yard if I requeen, I put the hive in the yard the strain resides.

Just and Idea how to track performance.

Tony