Club meeting at The Ranch
SPEAKER(via zoom): Corey Stevens
Breeding for Varroa Resistantce
Our main focus is selecting and breeding for mite and disease resistant honeybees. To achieve this, we use no treatments on our colonies. This is the best method we’ve found to really test breeding candidates. In addition to mite and brood disease resistance, we select for aggressive foraging and conservative use of winter stores. Harbo’s VSH assay is used to score mite resistance on overwintered colonies. Only colonies with very high VSH scores are used as breeding candidates. This ensures that we are steadily working our population to the highest achievable level of mite resistance. As a result of our choice to abstain from treatments, we can also offer raw honey guaranteed to be free from miticide and antibiotic contaminants.
zoom link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/83130190430?pwd=jbjkZI7NhXbaUwGAiBsONLjmwBHFfT.1