# VSH Queens



## Solomon Parker (Dec 21, 2002)

This should be an excellent discussion.

I don't have any VSH queens, and have decided not to use them based on the philosophy of Sam Comfort. VSH is more or less a single trait that has been artificially bred into a population of bees. Wild survivor bees have broad variability in VSH behavior and hygenic behavior. This leads to the idea that perhaps the breeding of single traits is not the most efficient way to control varroa. Bees like humans are creatures of an almost unfathomable number of traits. Single traits tend to not directly be tied one to one to genes. 

I have also avoided testing for mites for the reason that there is no justification in my mind that a certain level of mite infestation should be set as a limit. If the bees survive and produce honey sufficiently with any level of mite infestation, I am satisfied. This is how it works in nature.


----------



## Kingfisher Apiaries (Jan 16, 2010)

I have gazzodles of daughter queens from glenn breeders...they are the best bees I have....glenn's itailans rock....the VSH are really good to...yes you cannot work them without a veil or smoker....but they are really not all that bad...most of my daughter queens are coming from a daughter of a glenn queen.....
Glenn's VSH really is the best bee out there....
mike


----------



## Mosherd1 (Apr 17, 2011)

That is encouraging to hear, I appreciate your response. I am going to requeen most of my bees with the daughters this year and hope for the best! Has it been your experience that they still require annual treatments or is it a wait and see type of a thing for threshold?


----------



## NasalSponge (Jul 22, 2008)

From the reading I have done hygienic behavior is a recessive gene and must be present in BOTH the mother and the father meaning once a supercedure takes place you loose it...by which I mean you lose the 95%+ it takes for this trait to control mites.


----------



## honeyshack (Jan 6, 2008)

I think the matter of treating hives which have VSH strains is both a wait and see approach to mites and regular treatments.
I think it depends on the area of the country you live in. And it depends on what you want to see the hives do.
As to the first part of where you live...
If you live in a short winter temperate climate with lots of access to your hives VSH might be the answer to your prayers. Treatments might be a wait and see approach. For someone who lives in a climate like mine where the winters are hard and long, VSH is just an aid. It's part of a IPM program. That is it. Both areas require monitoring

As for what you expect of your bees,
again this also depends on your climate, but it also depends on your objectives of you hives. If your plan in honey production, pollination, or nuc making, some sort of help might be needed. However if you have hives for the sake of having hives, do not care about being able to meet financial needs, just cause you love the bees, VSH might be the answer to your prayers. 
Again no matter what road you take, monitoring is always necessary. The reason for monitoring the mite loads is to 1. know when they get under pressure, 2. to see if the VSH is doing it's job 3. if they die for some unknown reason and you ask why did they die, and someone asks you what were your mites counts, you have an answer to diagnose the problem.


----------



## Mosherd1 (Apr 17, 2011)

Sounds great. I appreciate everyone's thoughts. I live in CT and Honeyshack I think you are right. This is not the magic bullet, just another IPM tool. I am getting the darker strain of VSH X VSH with the hopes of better overwintering ability of her daughters.


----------



## camero7 (Sep 21, 2009)

Who supplies the "darker strain" of VSH? I was not aware of such a strain.


----------



## Kingfisher Apiaries (Jan 16, 2010)

camero7 said:


> Who supplies the "darker strain" of VSH? I was not aware of such a strain.


 Glenn sells a VSH yellow and a VSH dark.
mike


----------



## camero7 (Sep 21, 2009)

Thanks


----------



## Mosherd1 (Apr 17, 2011)

I will be getting mine from Glenn Apiaries and Suki has been a pleasure to deal with. Very knowledgable and responsive. I always get a quick answer from her. Classy operation. Also, for the price you can't beat it. Some places were $300-$400 for breeders. Glenn is $150 and that includes shipping. An easy and quick way to get some (hopefully) solid genetics into my operation. The way I look at it, if you can reduce some treatments, maybe sell some of the daughter, that $150 investment could pay for itself in no time.


----------



## camero7 (Sep 21, 2009)

Agreed... if you can get them to survive the winter. I failed and a couple of very good beeks around here also failed. Others have had to baby them to get them through the winter [sheds, heat tapes]. That doesn't make them desirable to me.


----------



## Mosherd1 (Apr 17, 2011)

Did you have to baby the breeders or the daughter queens through winter? That is one reservation that I had about going down this road. I have had good wintering success over the last 3 winters with some local carniolans from Full Bloom apiaries. Maybe I will only requeen half my hives if wintering can be an issue.


----------



## camero7 (Sep 21, 2009)

I didn't baby them and they both died in January. I get most of my queens from Full Bloom. I have great wintering success - over 90% with his queens, even in 5 frame nucs. I'm trying some of Russells Carni's and Caucasians this year and will also use Full Bloom cells. I also ordered a breeder queen from VP Queens {$80.00 + shipping}- his Spartan [Carni] line. If she survives the winter I'll raise some queens from her. None of them treat so the queens should have some basic mite resistance. I've given up on the pure VSH queens for now. Too bad they were developed in the deep south rather than the north.


----------



## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

Solomon Parker said:


> VSH is more or less a single trait that has been artificially bred into a population of bees. Wild survivor bees have broad variability in VSH behavior and hygenic behavior. This leads to the idea that perhaps the breeding of single traits is not the most efficient way to control varroa.


Who breeds for single traits? What intelligent queen breeder would select for one trait? I doubt any. VSH breeder queens are not production queens. They are for raising daughters whose drones have high VSH content. These drones mate with virgins from your own breeding stock, adding those genes to your breeding stock...and to the feral colonies in the neighborhood. Your breeding stock has been selected over a number of years with selection criteria for many important traits. 

Adding another trait to your stock is no different than nature creating a successful, beneficial mutation. The mutation spreads through the population and the population benefits as a whole. This is how it works in nature.


----------



## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

NasalSponge said:


> From the reading I have done hygienic behavior is a recessive gene and must be present in BOTH the mother and the father meaning once a supercedure takes place you loose it...by which I mean you lose the 95%+ it takes for this trait to control mites.


According to Spivak, a 30% VSH content is sufficient. 

This whole process takes time and is ongoing. Surely requeening your colonies with a VSH queen won't insure VSH daughters when the colony supersedes or swarms. But, once the bees in the neighborhood have a high enough VSH, their drones will be mating with your virgins.


----------



## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

camero7 said:


> Agreed... if you can get them to survive the winter. I failed and a couple of very good beeks around here also failed. Others have had to baby them to get them through the winter [sheds, heat tapes]. That doesn't make them desirable to me.


Again, these pure VSH queens aren't for production hives. They aren't really expected to survive a long winter. You should be raising as many queens as possible from them and then winter the daughters. 

These pure VSH colonies need special handling. They are so VSH that they tear out lots of brood. So much in some cases that the colony has a hard time building up. You have to add frames of emerging brood regularly so the nurse population stays high. If you don't they will likely supersede. If winter is an issue, you may have to build them up in the Fall with brood from other colonies.


----------



## Mosherd1 (Apr 17, 2011)

Mike-thanks for your advice on this. Do you think I should use the VSH breeder as a drone producer or to graft daughter queens from? Some people have said they have had difficulty getting VSH queens to overwinter well. So maybe producing drones would be better than grafting queens as the VSH concentration may not be as high?


----------



## Solomon Parker (Dec 21, 2002)

Michael Palmer said:


> These pure VSH colonies need special handling. They are so VSH that they tear out lots of brood. So much in some cases that the colony has a hard time building up. You have to add frames of emerging brood regularly so the nurse population stays high. If you don't they will likely supersede. If winter is an issue, you may have to build them up in the Fall with brood from other colonies.


And this is precisely why I don't want or need them. This single trait is not so valuable to me that I need to coddle them that much. They don't fit mother nature's ideal of a survivor.


----------



## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

I believe you are missing the point Solomon.


----------



## Solomon Parker (Dec 21, 2002)

I most certainly am. I won't keep bees that won't survive on their own.


----------



## Mosherd1 (Apr 17, 2011)

I just got done rereading Randy Oliver's article on MAQS. I am now second guessing my decision on purchasing a VSH breeder and requeening my hives with resistant (hopefully) queens. Besides the difference in cost of 1 treatment per year vs 2/year. Is it still worth it as an industry to breed for resistance when we have the so called "magic bullet"? I hope this will spark all kinds of debate and opinions.


----------



## NasalSponge (Jul 22, 2008)

MAQS would only be considered a "magic bullet" by folks who are willing to treat, I at this juncture, and many others, are not willing to do so.


----------



## NasalSponge (Jul 22, 2008)

> But, once the bees in the neighborhood have a high enough VSH, their drones will be mating with your virgins.


Interesting, I never looked at it from the drone angle.


----------



## ctgolfer (May 4, 2011)

I would be interested in these daughters when you get them hatched out, if you will be selling a few. From what I have read here you need to hatch all you can from these queens this summer. I would love to watch you graft this year if that is your intent.


----------



## Mosherd1 (Apr 17, 2011)

No problem, she is coming in on Tuesday and I will give her a couple of weeks to get going before I graft. I am going to graft a number of times throughout the next couple of months but I will definitely let you know. I hope spending the cash on her will be worth is with these new MAQS coming out. Time will tell...


----------



## Kingfisher Apiaries (Jan 16, 2010)

We use VSH daughters to graft from. They also through drones. our drone stock is MN Hygienic, Goldline, and VSH. If you get breeder queens from glenn..dont just use them for drones! Too expensive! I would graft a mess of daughters for next year...those would be your drone mothers. Then get some other stocks right now to through drones for next year. Or vice versa.
mike


----------



## Mosherd1 (Apr 17, 2011)

I am curious to hear from people who have tried Russians and VSH and their thoughts on which they prefer and why.


----------



## JSL (Sep 22, 2007)

Hi Everyone,

This is an interesting discussion! The following is simply my opinion based on my experience... VSH is a complex behavioral trait that has been studied for a good number of years now. I think there is a good understanding of what the trait does on a basic level, but I have a difficult time from a practical and theoretical level endorsing such a trait. The whole premise of VSH is that bees identify and remove "Varroa Infested" brood. However, there is a good deal of evidence that suggests VSH is not all that Varrao sensitive, but rather more hyper sensitive as they uncap and remove a good deal of healthy brood as well. That is to say a percentage of healtly brood becomes an unintended target. Here are my questions.... What is a healthy balance for VSH and can it actually be achieved in a population? I do not believe such a trait can achieve a balance or state of equilibrium in a population, which is why research has been unable to determine what the appropriate level of VSH should be in a population. There are only so many resources to go around in a colony. Is devoting energy and resources to a trait that cannibalizes brood a good idea from a practical standpoint? Again, if we look at the long term survivability of VSH colonies, I do not believe that such a trait is justifiable or beneficial towards controlling mite populations. To me, it would be analogous to selecting bees that express a high level of chalkbrood. One could argue that by reducing the amount of brood available to the mites, that would result in Varroa control. A bit farfetched, but there are very few examples of traits that occur in natural populations that require such an energy cost to an organism. Beekeepers have also argued that the VSH breeder queens are solely for breeding purposes, but what happens when your population becomes like the VSH breeders? In addition, a point that is not widely discussed is that VSH with increased uncapping and recapping may actually promote the distribution of brood diseases such as EFB. This is a point addressed by Harbo and Spivak in which they suggest that extra contact and care may increase the probability of spreading a disease such as EFB within the colony. But, it is quickly noted that the use of antibiotics will quickly rectify the problem…This is a really tough trait to think about because there are so many different aspects that must go into its use. 

My personal experience with the VSH lines over the years is that cost of any perceived Varroa control is not worth the cost in terms of colony productivity and survivability. 

Just my 2 cents,
Joe


----------



## Mosherd1 (Apr 17, 2011)

Great insight Joe, do you agree that the breeder queens may need to be babied along but her daughters mated with local, non VSH, drones may spark that balance between resistence and needless uncapping? Or do you think that it is just to hard to measure? In the long term do you see us as an industry moving away from VSH and continuing down the path of using MAQS or other treatments? Just curious, thanks for your insight.


----------



## Kingfisher Apiaries (Jan 16, 2010)

The open mated daughters kick most every line out there as far as production...the better ones went into the winter with 10-12 frames of brood....
Only thing better is the Buckfast..... However, MN hygienic does make more brood and comb than most of them...
mike


----------



## LtlWilli (Mar 11, 2008)

Mike,
Which color do you have? Is there a difference in temperament between them?


----------



## Mosherd1 (Apr 17, 2011)

Mike, so I just want to make sure I am clear, you are saying that you have been very happy with the open mated daughters of VSH breeders right? If so it is encouraging to hear. Strange how opinions are all across the board on these bees. I suppose it is like anything else in beekeeping. Thanks for the clarification.


----------



## tben (Dec 28, 2008)

In the discussion on VSH and other genetic traits in bees I've seen it mentioned that VSH is only one, small trait and so it will not have a big effect on bees as they compete against varroa. Let's not forgot what Charles Darwin said about genetic traits and the effect they have on populations. "For as all the inhabitants of each country are struggling together with nicely balanced forces, extremely slight modifications in the structure or habits of one inhabitant would often give it an advantage over others..." This is not to say that VSH is either beneficial or harmful to bees, but it does change the game and it will likely affect them one way or the other. How will we know if VSH is effective or not? By observing the performance of VSH hives and comparing it to those without the trait. Hope for moving away from the use of medicines and poisons to hives that survive with less treatment and beekeeper intervention comes from genetic traits that will give the bees an upper hand against varroa and disease. It is exciting and fascinating to see the range of ideas and methods people are using to raise a better bee. To those experimenting with VSH, collecting wild survivors, using non-treatment and allowing weak hives to die and the many other efforts to strengthen the honeybee population I say keep up the good work!


----------



## LtlWilli (Mar 11, 2008)

Mike, 
What color do you have? ...Is there a difference in temperament between them?


----------



## deknow (Jul 17, 2006)

A few thoughts:

VSH is a separate (although related) set of traits to HYG (hygienic behavior). Marla Spivak is a proponent of HYG, but is of the opinion that VSH is "metabolically expensive" (I agree, but I also think HYG is expensive).

Both of these traits exist in all bees. When we talk about VSH or HYG bees, we are talking about lines that exhibit a high degree of these traits. We can make some arbitrary line that we define "more than this is VSH, less is not", but it's all based on degrees, not wheter or not the bees remove dead (or varroa infested) brood...they all do to some extent.

I've done more research on HYG than VSH...but I think the same issues are at hand. In any naturally resistant population you care to measure that has not been bred specifically for these traits, you see a range of expression of VSH and HYG....that is to say, that in a naturally resistant population, the resistance does not seem to be due to VSH or HYG traits...nature is very efficient in such matters, and if this is not the route to resistance that we can see in nature, than it is probably not the way to encourage resistance.

Read Joe's post through a couple of times...it is very important!

When Michael and others talk about grafting from your breeder queens, listen to him! Those breeder queens are expensive, and to pay all that $$$ only to see if she will overwinter is risking a lot. What I think is being missed is that if these grafted queens are used for drone production, those drones don't have a father...they are full blooded haploid drones of the original breeder queen. _This_ is how you get your money's worth from these breeders.

I believe if you look at Marla's protocol for breeding for HYG traits, you will see that it requires constant testing and selection...because these traits do not stay fixed in the population (which should be a clue that they are not traits that the bees need). If the plan is to bring in a breeder queen that exhibits HYG or VSH to a high degree to improve your stock, and you do not do the followup testing and selection (not based on survival or production, but based on brood removal), you will lose the trait quickly.

deknow


----------



## Kingfisher Apiaries (Jan 16, 2010)

I have a darker VSH....coloring every color between a russian or carny and a black bee...I have some black queens actually.
mike


----------



## BEES4U (Oct 10, 2007)

Friday, May 20, 2011
The VSH trait consists of two traits which are recessive.
One is to detect the conditions within the cell and one for removing the cell contents.
Your maintenance of the VSH trait depends on your local drone population carrying the desired VSH traits.
Try to flood the DCA's, drone congreation areas, with plenty of desired stock.
I have observed that all of their breeder queens produce gentle bees.
I purchased the black strain of VSH from Tom and Suki Glenn.
Regards,


----------



## Mosherd1 (Apr 17, 2011)

Bees4u, have you been happy with what you have seen so far? I purchased a black VSH from them also this year but have not grafted yet.


----------



## Mosherd1 (Apr 17, 2011)

So it sounds like you are saying that if VSH is a desirable trait from the perspective of the bees then we will see this eventually in the survivor feral colonies. If not they will develop some other way of defending themselves like swarming, shutting down brood rearing at certain times of the year, absconding with drone brood capped etc.


----------



## Chrissy Shaw (Nov 21, 2006)

The idea of selecting for one trait is not for stock increase, but rather to incorporate the trait INTO one's breeding lines whcih one amagamates the desired stock traits via yard and field trests including wintering, defensive reacation, storage and use of and building of comb while assiting towards disease resistance.


----------

