All Hives / NUCs treated with Fumagilin-B
Our breeder stock comes from the Northern United States, in Ohio www.latshawapiaries.com
For many years we have simply referred to our bees as Cordovan Italians, however, we felt such a beautiful and productive bee should deserve a proper name. After many hours of reading the early history regarding Italian honey bees, we decided on the name AUREA.
AUREA means "GOLD". One of the early varieties of the Italian bee was know as the Aurea or "golden bee". It was well known for its brilliant yellow color and was well liked by many beekeepers for its gentle nature.
The Italian honey bee, A. m, ligustica, is the foundation for our stock. To further enhance the beauty of our Italians we incorporated the cordovan gene. The cordovan gene enhances the yellow pigmentation by inhibiting the production of black pigment in the exoskeleton.
To increase the level of performance and flexibility of the AUREA, we have modified our breeding program to accommodate the three-way hybrid system. We maintain two unrelated Cordovan Italian lines, which are evaluated and managed in an identical manner. We are then able to provide pure breeders from one line or we can also provide hybrid breeders, by crossing our two Cordovan Italian lines.
The beekeeper that wishes to purchase our inseminated hybrid breeders queens will then open mate the daughter queens with drones in their area, which effectively creates a three-way hybrid. In a "traditional" breeding program, only the workers will exhibit hybrid vigor because the breeder queen is produced from a single population and mated with drones from that same population. However with the three-way hybrid system, the queen and her workers will exhibit hybrid vigor and increased performance.
A three-way hybrid system produces bees and queens that are superior to ordinary open mated queens. Research conducted and published by Cale and Gowen showed that on average, their hybrid lines produced 35.5% more eggs and 14.7% more honey than their traditional lines.
Our KARNICA strain of Carniolans is our most recent addition to our program, and as with our Italian strain of bees, we felt as though our Carniolans deserved a proper name of their own. Unlike the history of the Italian strains, the early Carniolan strains were often named after the breeders that worked so diligently to perfect this beautiful bee. We decided to give credit to the region of Upper Carniola, the area for which the Carniolan bee is named.
The Carniolan bee, A. m. carnica is a dark European race of honey bee that originated in the region of Yugoslavia, Rumania, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Austria. Some of the earliest importations of the Carniolan bee into English speaking countries came from Upper Carniola, hence the name Carniolan.
The Carniolan race is known for its ability to withstand harsh winter temperatures and conservative use of winter stores. Carniolans winter with a relatively small cluster, but build rapidly in the spring when pollen and nectar become available.
Carniolans are excellent honey producers for areas that have quick early honey flows. Colony population is carefully regulated by pollen and nectar availability. Such a characteristic is ideal for a harsh environment, but may not be ideal in certain areas; Carniolans tend to reduce brood production in hot dry climates to the extent that they may miss the fall honey flow.