Over the years and after working with different honey bee strains from local and imported sources, we choose to focus our breeding programs on the Carniolan strains.

Since 2012 our breeding program is based on the New World Carniolan strain, this allow us to take advantage of the extensive scientific research and available data regarding this particular strain.

We use instrumentally inseminated New World Carniolan breeder queens as queen mothers. Our production queens are open mated, in an area flooded with drones from our breeding lines, our breeding lines queens are closed matted with selected New World Carniolan drones.

Carniolans bees are:

– Overwinter in small tight cluster, efficient use of winter store and adapt quickly to environmental changes.

– Rapid spring build up and forage longer hours in much colder weather than other breeds.

– Excellent producer and comb builder specially in shorter forage seasons.

– Gentle and fast to recover from disturbance.

– Less drifting and robbing behavior and strong sense of orientation makes it suitable for crowded yards and populated areas.

Selection Method:

We believe that selection and breeding protocol is most important factor for breeding great bees, research shows that in order to a prevent interbreeding, at least 100 hives with several breeding lines should be used in a breeding program. We add/renew at least one breeding line a year to maintain excellent traits and genetic diversity.

The main criteria used for selections are:

– Successfully locally overwinter outdoors in brood box with BeeCozy covers.

– High producing hives with very low tendency to swarm.

– Strong hives can be worked with without gloves and very little smoke, at dusk and light rain.

– Late summer Varroa mites count of less than 1 mites per 100 bees, using alcohol wash test.

– Have very high hygienic behavior, with more than 95% of killed brood cells using liquid nitrogen removed in 24 hours.