# Adam & Kelly @ VP Queen Bees



## jcase (Jul 30, 2016)

Released the queen today, every cell under the pushing cage had an egg or two in it, many had two. I should have setup a larger push in cage lol


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## Outdoor N8 (Aug 7, 2015)

Pulling up.

So, how are her daughters? Would you give us an update?


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## jcase (Jul 30, 2016)

Outdoor N8 said:


> Pulling up.
> 
> So, how are her daughters? Would you give us an update?


Well more about her,

on VSH assay she scored 75% (total of 2 assays for confirmation), on liquid nitrogen she scored 100%. She is still kicking.

Her open mated daughters are all great, but all over the chart on mite resistance (expected). Her inseminated daughters are doing great as well. I used the daughters for drone mothers for inseminations this year (make drones with daughters of queens you like, not queens you like).

Over all great addition to my gene pool.


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## AstroBee (Jan 3, 2003)

jcase said:


> on VSH assay she scored 75% (total of 2 assays for confirmation)


How does this one compare to others in your program? Is 75% typical, or on the low side? Also, are you keeping records on honey production. This is sometimes overlooked, and has been an aspect the "anti-VSH" crowd seems to latch onto as a major deficiency. I've seen that you can get both and try to make sure I always keep honey production as a key aspect in selections.


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## jcase (Jul 30, 2016)

AstroBee said:


> How does this one compare to others in your program? Is 75% typical, or on the low side? Also, are you keeping records on honey production. This is sometimes overlooked, and has been an aspect the "anti-VSH" crowd seems to latch onto as a major deficiency. I've seen that you can get both and try to make sure I always keep honey production as a key aspect in selections.


VP does not select just on VSH, and as far as I know they are not (maybe they are now?) doing the VSH assay. They are obviously keeping VSH high in their breeders, and what they are doing is working. Very impressed on how clean the bees are. The breeder, and the daughters I insemianted off of her all scored 100% on 24 hr FKB. 

From testing purchased queens, 75% is on the high side, most of the "VSH" bees I bought did not test out at all. Very disappointed in the VSH market, not sure if it is a dishonesty issue, or a lack of knowing better. I chose 75% as my drone grandmother or queen mother minimum, but 75% is a great trade off. You don't get the destruction you can get at around 100%. When you have full expression, the slightest iffy thing about brood causes the bees to remove it. I'm moving towards 100% by making sure one side of my crosses is always 100%, and retesting. I've also started out crossing to WSU caucasian and mite biters.

This picture is from a 100% hive that on the corner of a group of hives (lots of drift) and was loaded with too much drone brood (25% or so of frames). Mites do reproduce in drone brood. So you can see the OCD in action. Removing the drone brood, a shot of OA, and moving the hive corrected it completely. 









I am keeping honey records on the daughters of breeders, but not the breeders. I keep breeder hives very small, in hopes of extending how long the queen lives. I won't ever have bumper crops of honey, so I have to score them against other colonies. The climate here just doesn't support bumper crops, this year was particularly bad.

A 50% production queen would probably satisfy the anti VSH crowd just fine, they wouldn't really notice the behavior, but would still get a nice 33% reduction in mite growth. I will be running 50% VSH in my production colonies next year.


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## John Davis (Apr 29, 2014)

Jcase, a question for clarification. You are saying 75%VSH expression. To confirm my understanding that that means that you are opening a large number of the proper aged worker brood and of the female mites found 75% are non reproductive. What is your minimum number of mites found per sample to be statistically correct to be confident that 75% is close to accurate? 
I also use Adam's breeders and am happy with them and the daughters

I have also seen the brood pattern situation as you have, the bees are removing infected brood from a hive with a lot of mites resulting in what looks like a poor pattern. Treat for mites and the pattern gets good again. Show how well the VSH expression can work not a bad queen..


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## jcase (Jul 30, 2016)

John Davis said:


> Jcase, a question for clarification. You are saying 75%VSH expression. To confirm my understanding that that means that you are opening a large number of the proper aged worker brood and of the female mites found 75% are non reproductive. What is your minimum number of mites found per sample to be statistically correct to be confident that 75% is close to accurate?
> I also use Adam's breeders and am happy with them and the daughters


I uncap 150 7-8 day post capping worker cells under a microscope. I inspect each one, and use a count sheet, to count no mites, dead mites, late (unsuccessful) reproducing mites, and successful reproductive mites.

I take a ratio of dead or late reproductive mites, to successful reproduction. 1:2 is 50%, 1:1 is 75%, 1:0 is 100%.

I repeat this twice, if I can't find any mites the first time, I will take frames of about to be capped/just capped brood from non resistant hives, and introduce them to the hive, then test on those frames.

This is the paper I use http://www.harbobeeco.com/storage/measuring vsh April rev 2018pdf.pdf

Perhaps we should start another thread if people want to discuss this?

I'm very happy with the stock from Adam, it made up about 1/3 of my drone pool this year for inseminating my own.


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## Outdoor N8 (Aug 7, 2015)

Spoke with Adam this spring, not the conversation I was expecting. He suggested I just purchase queens from people he supplies VP breeder queens to. Ok...
I wanted one of their "*Open Mated Breeder Queens" (limited production),* Adam said I was on the list--never heard back from him. Maybe it was for the better..... I moved on and went with some stock out of Cali.


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