# VSH Honey Bees



## RichardsonTX (Jul 3, 2011)

For those of you who have actually purchased VSH breeder queens and then used them to produce daughter queens for use in your colonies, how effective were they?


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## AR Beekeeper (Sep 25, 2008)

When Glenn Apiaries was selling II Queens I used several of his and their daughter queens were very effective at removing varroa in the brood.


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## Aroc (May 18, 2016)

How much does one expect to pay for a VSH queen?


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## RichardsonTX (Jul 3, 2011)

AR Beekeeper, I've heard that too about Glenn Apiaries. Are you still using VSH breeder queens from someone else now? How were using IPM management techniques in conjunction with the VSH daughter queens?

Aroc, I think a VSH breeder queen is usually $250 and up. If they work as well as claimed by some articles I've read then at that price it may be worth it if 40+ effective daughter queens can be reared for use by a beekeeper.


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

I don't know why one has to buy the expensive vsh breeder.
Using the first generation daughter is good enough when she is open
mated with the vsh drones. The same queen copy like her mother.
After Glenn we still have the LA bee lab for the vsh genetics.


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## RichardsonTX (Jul 3, 2011)

beepro said:


> I don't know why one has to buy the expensive vsh breeder.
> Using the first generation daughter is good enough when she is open
> mated with the vsh drones. The same queen copy like her mother.
> After Glenn we still have the LA bee lab for the vsh genetics.


Beepro, but the Glenn Apiaries website says that the VSH genes are additive. This means that the more of them there are present, the more strongly the trait will be expressed. And the cost associated with the VSH breeder queen is because she is self-fertilized (mated with her drone offspring) through II. Her daughter queens will then be able to supposedly pass on the trait in sufficient strength to workers that will use the trait to keep varroa mites below the acceptable level in the colony. I would like to find out from beekeepers who've actually used one of these breeder queens to produce daughter queens, how effective has this worked for the beekeeper? 

I'm also curious how using a VSH breeder queen has impacted the other traits the beekeeper has worked to breed into their colonies. To me, it would seem like it's a huge cost to pay for losing valuable traits in your colonies that may be currently present but not present after the queen is replaced with a daughter queen from the VSH breeder queen.

Edit: Actually I am not sure about the self-fertilization comment I made above. I am just assuming this is how the VSH trait is emphasized. Hopefully, someone knowledgeable about this will comment about how this is done.


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## JRG13 (May 11, 2012)

You buy breeders to try to standardize the daughters as much as possible. F1 daughters are still good for drone mothers as well.


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## John Davis (Apr 29, 2014)

Think of the II breeder queen as an investment in time. You are starting with 15 years or so of breeding and selection ahead. The f1 daughters open mated will produce daughters that should express the VSH traits but since both generations are open mated you have a lot of variation to select through to pick the best breeders. This means evaluating the f3 daughters to pick the best f2s to graft from. You are in a similar situation as if trying to produce a Hereford from a pair of longhorns. It could be done since the genes are in there but it would take a while. Talk with the VSH breeder queen suppliers and they can fine tune the queen to help you reach you goals.


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## Fusion_power (Jan 14, 2005)

Bees that highly express VSH tend to be unproductive. This is a problem that breeders have worked on extensively for the last @10 years. More than that, pure VSH bees can't truly fend off varroa, they just last longer than unselected bees. Chain the traits together with VSH plus Allogrooming plus Mite Mauling and you have a combination that can survive long term and develop strong colonies to produce good honey crops.

I'm at the point of having bees that survive and thrive but are still not as productive as I would like. I need to bring in some outside stock to improve egg laying, reduce swarming tendency, and fine tune other production traits. I'm hoping that will wind up being some Buckfast queens from Canada.


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

The vsh supplier can also fine tune your
queen with your own drones too. Some will tailor
to your liking on the II process to preserve the desired
traits. Then the honey production will not be lost.
Yes, I got the grooming bees and now the vsh bees. Soon
it will be the mite biting bees to mix them all up. Because
honey production is important to me I will choose the breeders
that have the highest output. Lucky for me I already have the
Cordovan base stock to start with. Each individual apiary will
have their own problems to solve or to say for the bee improvement process.
Maybe by next year I can go completely tf without compromising any of the desired traits.


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