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About Us: We are a family that keeps bees here in Wake Forest, NC
We aim to raise locally adapted bees for our climate in North Carolina. So far the bees that we open mate have shown excellent Varroa/Trachael mite resistance. We have not tried any treatments for Varroa before.
Our bees appear to have a mixture of several different subspecies of Honeybees. Although there is a possibility that I will occasionally come across a colony that is a high percentage of one subspecies. This would happen if subspecies of honeybees breed towards purity by some method/s. Egyptian bees of Egypt are thought to breed pure in areas where other races of bees are present.
This breeding towards purity of a race of honeybee could explain how there would be Varroa resistant feral bees within areas that have varroa susceptible bees (i. e. Commercial Italian bee).
I have noticed our locally adapted mutts have traits similar to German black bees or even the Punic bee of the Maghreb region of Northwest Africa and Spain. A fair percentage of our colonies have dark thoracic haired drones.
The German black bee (Apis mellifera mellifera) is not necessarily a northern or cold climate adapted subspecies. There are southern strains of German black bees, like the Spanish or Italian strains that could be here in the Southeast, US where we experience summer dormancy and mild winters. Mitochondrial DNA of the German black bee have been found throughout the southern US, from California to North Carolina:
Genetic past, present, and future of the honey bee (Apis mellifera) in the United States of America.
There have been imports of many different kinds of honeybees in the United States from the past. The Buckfast breed of bee alone, (bred by Brother Adam), could have brought in several subspecies of honeybees when the Buckfast bee was imported into the United States by the USDA in 1970. The Buckfast bee had a large mixture of genetics of different subspecies of bees from across the world.
Our bees tend to be aggressive and nervous. I advise that you do not disturb the bees during the dormant summer season when they are most aggressive. Hive inspection during the summer dearth may lead to the death of the colony from stress.
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