For the past 14 years Harbo Bee Company has served as a source for honey bees that are resistant to Varroa destructor, a parasitic mite that has been the worldwide, number one beekeeping problem for the past fifty years.
OUR PRODUCTS are breeder queens that carry the alleles for varroa sensitive hygiene. Our breeder queens do not represent any special breed, race, or pedigreed line. Their purpose is to transfer varroa resistance to the customer’s bee population. (see VSH tab)
Each of our breeder queens has been artificially inseminated with VSH semen. Each of her daughter queens willl produce varroa resistant colonies -- even if those daughter queens mate with a customer's drones that do not carry the VSH alleles. Moreover, all the drones produced in colonies headed by a daughter queen will produce drones that carry all of the VSH alleles, further contributing to the spread of VSH.
OUR CUSTOMERS are professional and sideline queen producers within the USA who want bee colonies that do not need chemical or cultural treatments to control varroa.
OUR OBJECTIVE is to enable queen producers to incorporate varroa resistance into their bees. Doing so by purchasing a breeder queen is a first step. The next step is to increase the number of queen producers who are able to detect, measure, and propagate the VSH trait that they now have in their colonies. Instructions for measuring and scoring VSH are included and substantially expanded on this website as of February 2024. In 2020 we organized a cooperative VSH breeding program where members generate their own VSH stock and exchange their best with other members. We envision a nation-wide network of sustainable and diverse populations of honey bees that are resistant to varroa. (see Co-op tab)