AVAILABILITY— We produce a limited number of “PA Carniolan” locally mated Carniolan queens that are available June through beginning of August–end date depends on conditions each year. Queen cells available early May through late July or early August (weather dependent). Queens and queen cells are generally picked up at our location outside of Carlisle, PA. In addition, if you live closer to Nicholson or Mifflinburg, PA and want to pick up a queen during the summer, contact us in advance, as we will have monthly pickup options for queens and equipment near those locations (June-August). Starting in June, we will ship within PA using 1-day shipping. Queens are always marked. If you need an early queen, we also try to keep some Carniolan queens on hand that we use for our drone yard in early April and early May, as well as September.
QUEEN GENETICS–We use Artificially Inseminated (also called instrumentally inseminated) breeder queens for our queen grafting from a respected breeding program with over 22 years of experience in artificial insemination and VSH genetics. Our Pennslyvania open-mated “PA Carniolan” queens are grafted from these VSH (Varroa Sensitive Hygiene) Carniolan breeder queens, which (along with our drone genetics) helps provide the specific genetic traits that we love. This does not mean you do not need to monitor (and treat when needed) for varroa mites, as many factors including the influence of nearby apiaries impact your mite levels. Our outlying drone areas have queens from other well-known quality breeders (with Caucasian, Carniolan, and VSH Italian queens) to ensure good genetic diversity and specific traits.
OUR GUARANTEE–We want you to be happy with our bees, and if you follow our installation instructions, and your new mated queen is not laying within 15 days from your purchase, you can have a replacement queen or money back.
QUEEN CELLS–for pickup only. You assume any risk when purchasing cells, once they leave our property. These are an inexpensive option for splits or requeening if you have a little bit of beekeeping experience. Here is a great article on working with queen cells. They must be ordered online or in advance by email/phone/text/message (for special quantities and times) by contacting us. Pickup dates are very specific for queen cells. These cells are ready to be installed as soon as possible, ideally not kept in an incubator. You should have a queenless nuc or small colony (best acceptance for cells is by smaller colonies) ready the day before picking the cells up, as these are 10-11 days from grafting, so most will hatch within 12 hours-2 days, depending on day and time of day that you pick up. If you plan to requeen a larger colony with a cell, taking a few frames out with the existing queen into a smaller nuc is a great approach with a backup queen (existing queen) in the event that your mating is not successful. We include a JZ BZ queen cell protector, that will permit installing the cell down between two frames of brood. Bring a way to keep cells warm and safe and not vibrated (like a lunch cooler with a hot water bottle and foam or packing peanuts to avoid vibration).