Our Breeding

In our commercial apiary, the breeding of honey bee queens is a meticulous and controlled process designed to ensure the highest quality queens. Here’s an overview of the steps we take:

1. Selection of Breeder Queens:

We source breeder queens exclusively from renowned European apiaries known for their superior genetics and disease resistance. These apiaries have a long history of producing high-quality queens.

2. Monitoring and Testing:
The daughters of the breeder queens are raised and monitored over a full year. During this period, we assess their performance based on various criteria including honey production, temperament, disease resistance, and winter survival rates.

3. Isolation and Mating:
Once the breeder queens' daughters are tested for a year, breeding may begin. Mating hives are brought to mating yards. These yards are chosen for their geographic isolation (valleys, lakes, large rivers) to prevent unintended mating with drones from outside colonies, ensuring the maximum purity of the breeding lines.

4. Inbreeding control and improving of stock:
We breed a large number of drones to insure successful mating of queens. At ApisBaltic, we have adapted a breeding program that includes cross-breeding between different strains, which enhances genetic diversity, vitality and health of honey bees. By using drones from multiple genetic lines and different regions, we ensure that inbreeding risk is significantly reduced. To further mitigate the risk, we periodically introduce new breeder queens from different European apiaries to refresh the gene pool. 

5. Quality Control:
Each queen batch is tagged and tracked throughout their development. Only those queens from the batch that meet our stringent criteria are sold. This ensures that every queen from our apiary is of the highest quality, ready to contribute to robust and productive colonies.

Conclusion

By adhering to these rigorous breeding practices, we guarantee that our honey bee queens are of the highest quality. Our commitment to genetic diversity, stringent testing, and controlled breeding ensures that our queens are robust, productive, and ready to thrive in various environments.