HORNBAKER HYBRID
VSH POL-LINE: $25 MARKED
(LOCAL PICKUP ONLY) (CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE)
Ever since we started our beekeeping adventure here at Hornbaker Acres, queen rearing and queen genetics has always been a topic in which we have paid the most attention to out of great interest and intrigue. For the last couple years, we have focused on just that. We have spent the time to build a genetically diverse, strong and hardy apiary in an effort to provide a genetic pool suitable for the rearing of excellent local queens. With the already vast expenses involved in hobby beekeeping, we hope to be able to provide local beekeepers with a source of hardy and productive queens at a far more reasonable price, availability and convenience than those produced in other regions of the Nation. Our primary focus is providing queens for the local hobby beekeeper and do not focus on providing queens for large orders to commercial beekeepers first, like many queen breeders do.
Our queen rearing method starts with the location of our mating yard. As you can see from the above picture, our mating yard is a very isolated location with no agriculture or natural water sources in the area. This does a couple things for us. For one, it minimizes the prevalence of local (and therefore unknown) honey bees. Only the most hardy local honey bees would be able to survive in the wild here. With the lack of agriculture in the area, it also minimizes the prevalence of commercial beekeepers (with the closest known commercial beekeeper being several miles away) in the area with, again, unknown genetics. This does make it challenging for us though, as we have to truck in water for our bees. Also, as you can see, during the heat of summer there is no food sources for our bees. So, we feed our ladies heavily all year around.
We have also taken into consideration the general mating habits of honey bees. We have placed drone producing colonies between 1/4 mile to 1/2 mile around our mating colonies. It is likely that the drone congregation area (DCA) is in the wash area to the west. We will be testing this theory in the near future which will only further help us to completely saturate the area with our drones.
This brings us to our next, and likely most important, topic of our queen rearing method: the genetics we have chosen. After years of research and testing, we have found what we believe to be a strong "recipe" for our genetic line. It all starts with our Queen Mother (also known as our breeder queen) which is an instrumentally inseminated VSH Pol-Line 2.2 from VP Queens. This very strong genetic line (link to the description below) will make up half the genetics of all of our queens. The other half of the genetics will come from our drone producing colonies. We have multiple colonies of each of the following lines of genetics:
-Martha Carpenter Mite Mauler (directly from Bill Carpenter, took over two years to acquire due to very minimal availability)
-VSH Italian from Wildflower Meadows
-VSH Pol-Line from Scott's Bee Rock Honey
-Mite resistant hybrid from BeeWeaver Queens
-VSH Cordovan/Italian from Pendell Queens
-Saskatraz from Lappe's Bee Supply
-Feral carefully selected from our strongest locally bred lines (by far the best genetic line we have ever personally seen)
We are constantly searching for new genetics to introduce to our apiary and will update this list as we do. I highly encourage you to do your own research on each of these to see for yourself the value of the genetics we have introduced.
Our goal for the traits we hope to produce have always been hardiness (both to local climate and pest resistance), honey production and gentleness. Our goals are laid out in that order for a reason. The point of raising bees for most is honey production. If your bees cannot survive on their own, without severe beekeeper intervention, honey production will certainly be far less than it should be. Gentleness, though not as high on our priorities, is very important for us as well. This is due to the fact that many beekeepers purchasing queens live in urban areas and need their colonies to be gentle enough to work without fear of an incident with their family, animals or neighbors.
For a better explanation and insight into honey bee queen genetics and trait selection, read the article located here: https://www.hornbakeracres.com/post/queen-genetics-and-traits
So, take a moment to look at each of the genetic lines we mentioned and do your own research into our methods. If you have any questions or would like to give a Hornbaker Hybrid Italian Queen a try, contact us at HornbakerAcres@yahoo.com.
VP VSH Pol-Line 2.2 (our breeder queen) information: https://vpqueenbees.com/vp-breeding-program/pol-line
