Queen Bees Buckfast F1
All our lines are stabilized in characters peculiar to the selection of buckfast.
- Crop performance
- Low swarm tendency
- Excellent overwintering and good spring development capacity
- Great ability to overcome moments of climate imbalance (cold returns or periods of drought) maintaining an excellent balance between bees, stocks and brood
- Longevity and vitality of bees
- Docility with a good defensive instinct and grooming skills.
- High level of hygiene: > 90% in 12H of recognition, removal and cleaning of damaged brood on breeders
Buckfast F1 Queen Bees
All our lines are stabilized in characters peculiar to the selection of buckfast.
- Crop performance
- Low swarm tendency
- Excellent overwintering and good spring development capacity
- Great ability to overcome moments of climate imbalance (cold returns or periods of drought) maintaining an excellent balance between bees, stocks and brood
- Longevity and vitality of bees
- Docility with a good defensive instinct and grooming skills.
- High level of hygiene: > 90% in 12H of recognition, removal and cleaning of damaged brood on breeders
Our genetic lines are included in the European selection program VSH+, of which Tenuta Ritiro is the founding company.
VSH+
Our selection is based on lines that manifest in F1 a high heribility of HYG (hygiene) and characteristics related to varroa resistance together with excellent productivity on crops.
This is the result of balancing, in the mating program, between a controlled heterosis, necessary for the vitality and productivity of the lines and the homogeneousness of the individual characters in order to consolidate and maintain in the offspring a high level of VSH without the effect of depression and decreased performance due to the reduction of genetic variability.
Hence the name VSH+
Heribility of the characters that contribute to varroa resistance while maintaining the necessary balance at the intersections with great genetic variability.
A large number of sister queens from all our lines are tested in the European VSH+ network, in very different climatic- environmental and harvest conditions: from scottish moors to southern Italy through a shared pre-selection protocol.
The best specimens enter the VSH selection protocol:
- Grooming
- ability to recognize and open infested cells (decapping)
- Hygienic testing (HYG)
- SMR test
- Infection of a colony with a predefined number of varroe and tests.
To test the level of hygiene we use the standard pin test protocol with our mold that allows us to run it quickly on a very large number of colonies.
A high level of HYG: 80% aperture of the damaged brood in 6/8H is the first signal that a line has varroa resistance characters.
We also test the ability to react to a high load of viruses, considering the immunoreaction of the colony and the immune system of the single bee as factors of primary importance.
To isolate varroa resistance characters faster and speed up selective pressure in our lines we use instrumental insemination with a single fuco in the spring and test the ability to handle a high varroa load with at least one artificial infection.
In summer the best specimens are used as female lines in our isolated fertilization stations, respecting the nature of additive and recessive transmissibility of all the characters that contribute to varroa resistance.
For this reason, in our selection program, the choice of male lines, plays a major role.
