Golden Rule Honey

We have a limited number of queens available for the summer of 2010.  We have a larger number of cells and/or virgin queens (although virgins are less popular for requeening, they build upon genetics rather than replacing them as mated queens do).  Email us if you are interested.

Our stock is nothing pedigree, just a loose mixture of our best overwintered stock (originally from Don FatBeeMan...these are from the colonies that were not medicated in any way, nor were they fed), some Russian hybrid stock from Kirk Webster (85% Russian by his estimation), and whatever else is in our area.

The mechanics of honeybee genetics are extremely specialized.  A single queen offers half of her genes to every worker and queen in the colony (and the combinations of genes that make up the one half are as unique as snowflakes).  That same queen mates with up to 30 or so drones...each one of which carries half the genes of it's own queen-mother....each sperm produced by a drone is identical to every other that the same individual drone produces.  In these ways, there is both uniformity and diversity expressed from both the mother and father side of a colony of bees.  The mere fact that such a system has evolved indicates that in the case of the honey bee's unique lifestyle and biology, such a system is necessary.  For this reason (and others), we are not fond of extremely tightly controlled mating (via instrumental insemination or by extremely tight breeding protocalls)...the honeybee is ill suited to such "improvements".

Our bees are open mated from our best colonies, and our least productive colonies are broken up and headed by our own home raised queens.  We will do our best to replace any queens that are sub-par (drone layers, spotty patterns, etc), but can't guarantee this 12 months of the year.