Seeking Various Queens

Bump, any suggestions?

K Horn said:

I am seeking a few different lines of queens to add to my drone stock. Looking for production queens in the following varieties: Harbo, Pol-Line, Mite Biters (maulers, ankle biters, etc) or any other highly pest/disease resistant/aggressive lines. Feel free to email me as well. [email protected]. Thanks all!

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As I understand it Harbo took this year off from selling queens to work on his line of bees. As for Pol-lines you can go to VPQueens.com. There you will find a list of production queen producers. They came out with a new line of Pol-lines this year called 2.2 as well. You could also try Johnny Thompson at Broke T Apiaries. He has some of Jeff Harris' stock along with others. Ph 1-601-562-0701. He may have some still available for this year. Pol-lines never really worked that well with me but alot of people I know in beekeeping like them a lot. I really like VPs Allegro line for longevity. Hope this helps on your quest. Good luck.

Yeah I had heard about Harbo taking the year off but wasn't sure of anybody outside of them were producing their lines. Tried through VP Queens but haven't found anyone on their list that have any right now. I will check out the breeder you mentioned. Appreciate it! If, and that is a big if, all goes as I hope my drone stock will include at least 7 different varieties of stock from about 12 different genetic lines. This will also include my best local feral stock. My mother queen is an AI Cordovan/Italian. So the queens I hope to produce will be complete mutts. Just experimenting at this point.

K Horn said:

Yeah I had heard about Harbo taking the year off but wasn't sure of anybody outside of them were producing their lines. Tried through VP Queens but haven't found anyone on their list that have any right now. I will check out the breeder you mentioned. Appreciate it! If, and that is a big if, all goes as I hope my drone stock will include at least 7 different varieties of stock from about 12 different genetic lines. This will also include my best local feral stock. My mother queen is an AI Cordovan/Italian. So the queens I hope to produce will be complete mutts. Just experimenting at this point.

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Hi Kyle, I am trying to understand what you are trying to do. If it is to make mutts then why not just let them mate. the local drone would only come into play if your queen did Apiary Vicinity mating. there are case studies where Queens will travel several miles to mate, so the local drones may not have an impact.
GG

I live in Arizona so the Africanized Honey Bee is very prevalent which means open breeding is more challenging. Yes I am aware of the travel distance for both virgin queens and drones in search of the drone congregation area for mating. My mating yard is in between two drone saturation yards and they are separated by a decent distance. I have doubles of all the lines for my drone production queens for this reason. This really helps increase the chance that the virgin queens will mostly mate with my drones.

I have often recommended Olympic Wilderness Apiary. Tough bees that have produced excellent crops early in the season for me. Their website gives a real good description on their bees.

I will look into them. Thanks!