WELCOME TO OUR 2026 WEBSITE
Harbo Bee Company has produced breeder queens with varroa sensitive hygiene (VSH) for the past twelve years. We have sold them only to queen producers.
We have decided to take a broader approach, to move away from selling breeder queens and to advocate for selling virgin queens that have all the alleles for varroa resistance.
The key is to have verifiable standards for queen bees. Details are provided in our attached file entitled Establishing Quality Standards and Expanding the Availability of Varroa Resistant Bees. One can access this 4 page file, as well as the files mentioned below, by going to the Measure VSH tab on the Navigation Menu.
Finding and Retaining Varroa-Resistant Bees was posted last year. With graphs and photos this 23 page file explains
- How bees with the VSH trait control mites
- How to measure the level of VSH in their bees by using the magnify app on a cell phone
- How to use your measurements to score the level of VSH in a colony and
- How to record scores in a mother-father-daughter format
A Path to Nationwide Resistance to Varroa. This newly posted, one-page article explains how we may be selecting bees for varroa susceptibility when we breed from colonies that have the fewest mites on adult bees.