2026 Queens

***Our PA 2026 queens will be available in May or June 2026--the timing is completely spring weather dependent.***

We may also have some August 2025 PA overwintered queens and other queens that we bring in for sale in April 2026--any of those details will be posted in the spring.

OUR PA QUEENS are open mated in our bee yards in Pennsylvania and are based on our primary goals: good honey production, not aggressive, and the mother (breeder queen) showing mite resistance. We do not recommend that you do not treat or test for varroa--always test your varroa mite levels throughout the season as many factors can influence that, including sudden mite pressure from nearby bees or robbing later in the season. Each season we produce a limited number of high quality Pennsylvania mated queens, based on local and inseminated VSH Pol-line 2.2 genetics. We have tested and slowly moved towards Pol-line queens over the last few years, although we still have Carniolan and other lines with traits we value in use in our drone colonies (gentleness, mite resistance, productivity, for example). We maintain a pool of inseminated and proven breeder queens for our queen rearing, and we select out of Pol-line 2.2 breeder queens for the traits that work best for us. The mated queens are still "open" mated, so the queen you purchase will be based on the mother, plus a mix of our drone yard stock (which includes a variety of genetic lines) and any other colonies nearby. When you buy a queen from a varroa-resistant mother, you won't really know whether her daughters (your colony) will inherit that trait until the end of the season, if you're testing, so if you want to be sure to add such genetics to your apiary, buy more than one! The good news is that regardless of whether the workers (via the queen) inherit varroa resistance, all (100%) of your drones from that colony will spread varroa resistance (because drones don't have fathers, only grandfathers, so they are passing on the trait from the breeder queen).