Artificial insemination, VSH selection

The use and routine of artificial insemination became absolutely indispensable in our apiary. We introduced the method according to the challenges of today’s age. All our selection efforts would be useless if we would only rely on free mating.

Therefore we do the artificial insemination of 150-200 queens annually to satisfy our own needs. These serve afterwards as the initial breeding stock every year, which we sort according to the international selection criteria and our own as well. The queens are put into MiniPlus hives after initial selection. We test and sort them in these in their first and second year.

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Over the years we established partnership with several Hungarian apiaries, so they can test our bees under production circumstances as well.

One of the biggest problems of today’s beekeeping around the globe is the damage caused by Varroa destructor, therefore as an alternative solution we started to select Varroa Sensitive Hygiene (VSH) bees. We rank the breeding families according to this aspect (VSH) every year.

Considering this and cousinhood, we try to stabilise this attribute at a certain level of inbreeding.

Keeping the characteristics of different bloodlines is only possible in a closed population, so we also have to keep their genetical diversity in mind. Therefore we do genetical examinations with the most outstanding families, where the sex alleles present in the family get determined.