Mission

Increasingly frustrated with the need to spend large amounts of money on chemicals that poorly controlled the pest populations destroying our colonies, and unhappy with the presence of the residues of those chemicals in our honey and other hive products, we began "searching for a better way..."

VSH / RUSSIAN / WILD SURVIVOR STOCK

In 1997 we established an isolated mating yard using the offspring of feral bees which have been captured from remote areas of the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State. Testing of these wild bees @ WSU in conjunction with the oral history of our area suggests that these bees are Caucasian survivors of the bees brought here by early homesteaders.

In the spring of 2000, we introduced a USDA Russian breeder queen into our stock selection program. Since our wild bees already demonstrated many of the same positive traits observed in the Russians, we felt certain that this cross would further improve the line. Testing in the fall of 2000 showed extremely low varroa mite levels without the use of chemical miticides, and they also test positive for hygienic behavior.

In spring of 2001 we extended the use of hygienic behavior testing into our drone colony management, as well as our breeder queen selection process, further insuring the production of a hardy, mite-resistant bee, uniquely well suited to our Pacific North"Wet" climate.

In November 2001, The American Bee Journal published the results of the Tracheal Mite resistance of the Russian stock. Our stock demonstrates performance in keeping with this study.

Since many modern beekeeping practices place unavoidable stress on honeybee colonies; it would seem that the opportunistic and tenacious Varroa Destructor is here to stay. Because of this, we recommend monitoring varroa mite levels, and utilizing some approved form of soft organic mite control if necessary. (Api Life Var ©, Sucrocide ©, or Mite-Away II formic acid pads ©).

Our goal is chemical-free hive management. We have not used chemical miticides since fall of 2001, and in some colonies, not since fall of 1999. With the addition of a Smart Queen (SMR) breeder queen in the summer of 2002, we have further increased our Varroa mite resistance.

All queens are now open mated in isolated mating yards to our own uniquely controlled drone population comprised of predominantly Wild Survivor Stock, with the remaining percentage equally split between USDA Russian and VSH.

It is our belief that if well managed, these queens will produce hardy colonies that require little or no chemical intervention.

Although we do not offer package bees at this time, we do have a limited number of 3-frame Nucs available by prior arrangement to those who live close enough to pick them up. Please call to confirm pricing and availability.

NOTE: Our own Olympic Wilderness Apiary queen stock was accepted for inclusion in both the Washington State University and the Cornell University Selection and Breeding Programs.

• In 2004 we were informed that our OWA stock not only survived WSU's criteria selection process, but was also chosen as one of the final 8 individual stock lines being used in WSU's extended stock breeding program. At its' conclusion, open-mated hybrid queens were released to beekeepers for use in their own apiaries.
  Click here for more information.
• In the spring of 2006, when Cornell University called to order more OWA queens for inclusion in their new 2006 breeding project we were informed that our OWA stock had not only survived, but performed amazingly well in the otherwise dismally failed Cornell project which began in 2002. OWA was one of only 32 Queens of the original 150 that survived...
  Click here to read their report...

Thank you for your consideration of our stock.