May 11, 2026

Queen Series: Randy & Eric Oliver on Selective Breeding and Varroa-Resistant Bees (384)

In this episode of Beekeeping Today Podcast, Jeff Ott and Becky Masterman continue their queen-focused spring series with longtime beekeeper, researcher, and educator Randy Oliver and commercial beekeeper Eric Oliver. The conversation explores the realities of large-scale selective breeding for Varroa-resistant honey bees and the development of the Golden West queen line.

Randy explains how his operation shifted toward breeding for mite resistance after discovering a colony in 2015 that consistently maintained zero Varroa counts without treatment. That colony became “Queen Zero,” launching a years-long selective breeding effort focused on resistance, gentleness, and honey production. Eric discusses how the operation evolved from occasional mite sampling into full-operation mite washing programs involving thousands of colonies, streamlined systems, and detailed tracking methods.

The discussion covers the importance of drone saturation, isolated mating yards, and why successful breeding programs require cooperation among large groups of beekeepers. Randy and Eric explain their partnership with Olivarez Honey Bees to scale Golden West queen production while preserving genetic consistency through controlled mating environments.

Jeff and Becky also discuss how healthier bees change the overall beekeeping experience, from colony management and overwintering to reduced chemical inputs and calmer hive behavior. Randy shares his views on breeding for gentleness, avoiding “Frankenbee” genetics, and why maintaining a stable breeding population is essential for long-term progress against Varroa mites.

The episode also includes a listener question from Anne Bettencourt about how long beginning beekeepers should keep colonies open during inspections, leading to a thoughtful discussion on balancing learning opportunities with colony health and productivity.

Websites from the episode and others we recommend:

Scientific Beekeeping: https://scientificbeekeeping.com
Olivarez Honey Bees: https://www.ohbees.com/
Honey Bee Health Coalition: https://honeybeehealthcoalition.org
Project Apis m. (PAm): https://www.projectapism.org
The National Honey Board: https://honey.com
Honey Bee Obscura Podcast: https://honeybeeobscura.com

______________

Betterbee is the presenting sponsor of Beekeeping Today Podcast. Betterbee’s mission is to support every beekeeper with excellent customer service, continued education and quality equipment. From their colorful and informative catalog to their support of beekeeper educational activities, including this podcast series, Betterbee truly is Beekeepers Serving Beekeepers. See for yourself at www.betterbee.com

This episode is brought to you by Global Patties! Global offers a variety of standard and custom patties. Visit them today at http://globalpatties.com and let them know you appreciate them sponsoring this episode!

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As a beekeeper, you want products that benefit you and your bees. When you choose Premier Bee Products, you choose hive components that are healthier for bees and more productive for you. Because we believe that in beekeeping, details make all the difference. Premier Bee Products: Better for bees. Better for beekeepers. Use promo code PODCAST for 10% off your next online order.

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APIS Tactical is a beekeeping brand focused on innovation. We create a wide range of gear for beekeepers of all types—whether you’re managing a few hives or working bees every day. We combine science and artistry to create purposeful, hardworking gear. We’re here to help you care for your bees with confidence, so you can focus on what matters most—your hive.

Thanks to Strong Microbials for their support of Beekeeping Today Podcast. Find out more about their line of probiotics in our Season 3, Episode 12 episode and from their website: https://www.strongmicrobials.com

HiveIQ

HiveIQ is revolutionizing the way beekeepers manage their colonies with innovative, insulated hive systems designed for maximum colony health and efficiency. Their hives maintain stable temperatures year-round, reduce stress on the bees, and are built to last using durable, lightweight materials. Whether you’re managing two hives or two hundred, HiveIQ’s smart design helps your bees thrive while saving you time and effort. Learn more at HiveIQ.com.

Vita-Bee-Health

We’d like to thank Vita Bee Health for supporting the podcast. Vita provides proven tools for controlling Varroa—from Apistan and Apiguard to the new VarroxSan extended-release oxalic acid strips—helping beekeepers keep stronger, healthier colonies.

Thanks for Northern Bee Books for their support. Northern Bee Books is the publisher of bee books available worldwide from their website or from Amazon and bookstores everywhere. They are also the publishers of The Beekeepers Quarterly and Natural Bee Husbandry.

_______________

We hope you enjoy this podcast and welcome your questions and comments in the show notes of this episode or: questions@beekeepingtodaypodcast.com

Thank you for listening!

Podcast music: Be Strong by Young Presidents; Epilogue by Musicalman; Faraday by BeGun; Walking in Paris by Studio Le Bus; A Fresh New Start by Pete Morse; Wedding Day by Boomer; Christmas Avenue by Immersive Music; Red Jack Blues by Daniel Hart; Bolero de la Fontero by Rimsky Music; Perfect Sky by Graceful Movement; I'm Not Running Away This Time by Max Brodie; Original guitar background instrumental by Jeff Ott.

Beekeeping Today Podcast is an audio production of Growing Planet Media, LLC

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WEBVTT

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Hi, this is Lori Barfield.

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I'm from Dallas, Texas, and I'm here at the expo.

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We're having a fantastic time.

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Um we're just overwhelmed with all the things that are here.

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It's so exciting and so much fun.

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I did the mead uh making

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class yesterday with my granddaughter Aria and she's from Dallas too.

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She helps me with the bees and she's nine years old.

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I just wanted to say

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Hello to everybody and wish that you have the experience to come to an expo at some time.

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Have a great day and welcome to Beekeeping Today.

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Welcome to Beekeeping Today podcast presented by Betterbee, your source for beekeeping news, information, and entertainment.

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I'm Jeff Ott.

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And I'm Becky Masterman.

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Today's episode is brought to you by the Bee Nutrition Superheroes at Global Patties.

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Quick shout out to Betterbee and all of our sponsors whose support allows us to bring you this podcast each week without resorting to a fee-based subscription.

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We don't want that and we know you don't either.

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Be sure to check out

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All of our content on the website.

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There, you can read up on all of our guests, read our blog on the various aspects and observations about beekeeping, search for, download, and listen to over 300 past episodes, read episode transcripts, leave comments,

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Comments and feedback on each episode and check on podcast specials from our sponsors.

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You can find it all at www.

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beekeepingtoday.

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com.

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Thank you, Lori, from Dallas, Texas, for that.

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Fantastic opening from the floor of the North American Honey Bee Expo in January.

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There are a lot of beekeepers in that state.

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Yeah, and they're hoppin' now.

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This is a growing time for them.

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Actually they're probably halfway through their season now

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Before the before the dry season shows up.

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Well thanks and and for your granddaughter who I remember standing there and too shy to talk on the microphone.

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Next year.

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Next year.

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When there's always next year.

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Looking forward to this show today with Randy Oliver and his son Eric.

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Before we get to them, because I know they'll be showing up here shortly, we do have a listener question for our Hive IQ Hive Tool promotion

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where listeners can send us their question and we will try to answer it or we will answer it and if we

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If we choose your question.

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We'll give you an answer.

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If we read your question on the air, we will send you a hive tool for free.

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It's a beautiful hive tools branded, of course, uh with Beekeeping Today Podcast, and it's from our friends at HiveIQ

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And you too can send us a question simply by selecting and clicking on the little microphone icon on our website on the homepage.

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Actually, it shows up on every page.

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If you have a question, just leave us a question and we'll use that in a future episode.

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Or you can email us.

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But who is our question from today?

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Our question today is from Anne Bettencourt, which I absolutely love this name.

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And Anne writes, as a newbie keeper

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How much time should I spend with the hive open when doing inspections?

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That's such a good question.

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That's a good question.

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I'm kinda curious.

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I want you to answer first because I think I'm I'm a little strict on this and and I've been I've been schooled, but I I still stand by my answer.

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But go for it.

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What do what do you say, Jeff?

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It depends what your purpose with the bees are

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If it's an educational hive, then leave it open as long as you want.

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Let me qualify first.

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What's your weather like?

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All right, that's the first if it's raining, don't open it

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unless you absolutely positively must.

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But let's assume it's a nice, clear, sunny, seventy degree day, no wind.

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And it is a Chamber of Commerce day

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And it's the educational hive.

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Leave it open as long as you need to to answer your questions.

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You can go through each frame looking for the queen or looking for eggs, looking at pollen stores, looking at honey stores.

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But if your f focus is on honey production or other reasons, I am pretty strict on not opening a colony unless I have a specific reason to.

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Because I figure every time I open that colony up

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I'm taking one day of production out of their cycle.

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And the more times I pull a frame out of a brew chamber

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the greater the risk of rolling a queen or killing a queen or doing something that I'll regret in twenty days or so.

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So that's my long answer.

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So there's no hard strict rule other than the weather outside.

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I like that answer.

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I like how many qualifications you had to your answer.

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As Kim Flottum would say, it depends.

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So I I I've heard from so many beginning beekeepers who are

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love spending time in the hive and they love looking at every single frame and they they love how how it's fun to

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fun to look for the queen.

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I will tell you they are all so disappointed when that colony dies in the fall or winter.

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And and so I will say I I I'm a little strict on this because I think that

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Although you are learning, the fewer frames you have to pull out and and check, you want to make sure that the the queen is there, you want to look for eggs to help you with that answer.

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You want to make sure that the brood is healthy, you want to make sure that they have enough food, and you want to make sure that they have enough space, right?

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So you want to make sure that all those things are are happening in in the colony.

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And as a beginner, it's

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already gonna take you longer to do that.

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But then if you go on the B tour and if you pull every frame and and you just

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You look at every single frame and you admire how beautiful they are, it really is going to set them back.

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And as you said, it's a it's a risk for

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for hurting the queen.

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It's a risk for you getting stung because you're in there so long.

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So so I stand firm by once you've answered those questions, those four questions

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I really think you should you should just say goodbye and then come back again in seven to ten days.

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With that said, I've been schooled on it because

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because I've been told, you know, that it's more about learning about the colony instead of actually production or wintering.

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I still stand by my recommendations, but I've heard from other beekeepers, particularly when I was in Arkansas, the suggestion from the panel

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they were all in consensus that go ahead and have one colony that you you do those quick checks on and another colony that you spend a lot of time in and then maybe expect to see a difference in how they do.

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So that's maybe a compromise, although I still say

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Don't move quickly, but don't bug the girls.

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Yeah, move efficiently.

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It changes as your experience grows and if you really want to get into the biology of honey bees, there's always the option of observation hive.

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But that's a whole nother episode that you can find and sort of do a search on.

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And our past episodes we've had some good conversations about observation hives.

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Thank you, Anne, for that question.

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You will be receiving your Hive tool from HiveIQ and Beekeeping Today in the mail in a few days.

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Well coming up, we will be continuing our series on queens and queen breeding with our guests Randy Oliver and Eric Oliver.

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Stand by, they'll be here right after our words from our sponsors.

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This episode of Beekeeping Today podcast is brought to you in part by Apis Tactical.

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00:09:10.920 --> 00:09:13.080
Hey everybody, welcome back.

00:09:12.860 --> 00:09:20.940
Sitting around the great big virtual Beekeeping Today podcast table, we have Randy and Eric Oliver and Becky and myself.

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Welcome everybody to the show.

00:09:22.780 --> 00:09:24.060
Good morning.

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I think, Jeff, we could not have picked a a worse time for this because this is queen rearing season.

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This is this is beekeeping season and we have two of kind of the busiest

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beekeepers in North America on the podcast.

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So thank you both of you.

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We have one more day of winter left.

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And we are at going to be like eighty-four degrees today.

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We uh uh we have summer occurring during winter when normally the bees are slowed down.

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Things are moving very, very rapidly right now.

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Well, we appreciate both of you taking your time out of your busy days to be here today.

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We were talking before we started recording and Eric has a crew waiting for him and so we're just gonna get moving here without all the proper hoopla that we usually do

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Our series this spring is about queens, and we wanted to have you come on the show and talk to us about your queen reading selection process and what's involved in that, what's myth, what's real.

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And how does it actually play out in the real world when you get away from the textbook?

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If we could have Eric introduce yourself very quickly, that would be fantastic.

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Yeah, my name's Eric Oliver.

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I'm obviously Randy's son

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I've been keeping bees, well, I've been helping out since I was, you know, I was born into it with my father, but originally followed in his other footsteps of building houses.

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And then uh my housing project that I was working on happened to end in 2008 when the housing market crashed and there wasn't much work for young carpenters.

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So I came on with my father.

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at that point and started helping building boxes and moving bees around and stuff and saw the potential for the growth and

00:11:04.640 --> 00:11:15.040
Started assisting in that and eventually over time started taking over the business and at this point have fully taken over operations uh with myself and my brother and his small crew

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We've grown quite a bit since taking it over from my father.

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We're still pretty small up here.

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We took around 1200 hives to almonds

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Now we're back here making nucs.

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And Randy, for our one or two listeners who may not know who you are, just give us a brief background of how you got in a bees.

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I got into bees as a teenager when the swarm l landed in the neighbor's uh hedge.

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Got them into a cardboard box with a face mask and a sweatshirt on.

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And then uh asked around and found that one of my classmates' father was a sideline beekeeper with a couple of hundred colonies

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So I started traditional way by apprenticing to an experienced beekeeper as a older guy with a bad back.

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I was a younger guy with a good back.

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So learn it from somebody who knew what they were doing early on.

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Went on to get degrees in biology and tomology

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when Brewers started uh killing our colonies, I said, What what the heck?

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I've got degrees in insecticulture and and uh background in agriculture.

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Why am I letting a mite kill all my livestock

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And went back and uh hit the books.

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We took up education again and um started doing research and writing on beekeeping my myself.

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And now I run a website called Scientific Beekeeping.

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Which is followed by beekeepers around the world just for updates on research and bee biology.

00:12:37.720 --> 00:12:42.680
So we invited here to talk about the whole queen breeding process.

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For our listeners who don't know what is involved in a commercial scale queen breeding process, can you kind of give us a high-level view of your operation?

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What does it entail?

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What are the big pieces and parts of it?

00:12:55.100 --> 00:12:59.660
So selective breeding is is the same as for any other plant or animal.

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Virtually every breed of livestock or or plant that we use was selectively bred by the farmers or ranchers.

00:13:09.339 --> 00:13:13.740
prior to the words science or genetics were been being embedded.

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What they did is they just look for certain traits.

00:13:16.459 --> 00:13:19.740
So if you want to if you're breeding wolves

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or domestic dogs and you want one that has is white, you pick out the ones that have white coloration and you select for those to breed and you don't breed for the ones that are brown or black or other colors.

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If you do this for en enough years you wind up with all white dogs.

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Okay.

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That's selective breeding.

00:13:40.399 --> 00:13:41.120
Okay.

00:13:41.120 --> 00:13:44.000
There was the wild mustard plant.

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Well some people selected for larger seed uh flower heads.

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From that we got cauliflower and broccoli.

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Those are wild mustards that were selected for large flower heads.

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If you go for large leaves, we got cabbages.

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Those are all from the same wild plant.

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And those are done without any scientific knowledge at all.

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You simply look select for certain traits.

00:14:06.340 --> 00:14:09.940
So with honey beans, many of us select for gentleness.

00:14:09.940 --> 00:14:11.620
That's really easy.

00:14:11.360 --> 00:14:19.120
You just kill any queens who of colonies that sting you a lot and replace with daughter queens from other colonies.

00:14:19.120 --> 00:14:24.320
You don't have to kill the colony, you only just select your breed from the queens.

00:14:24.060 --> 00:14:27.420
So generalness is very easy to select for.

00:14:27.420 --> 00:14:29.660
Honey production can also be selection for.

00:14:29.660 --> 00:14:33.980
You only breed off your colonies that made a whole lot of honey.

00:14:33.980 --> 00:14:37.580
I realized years ago that the only long-term solution for

00:14:37.920 --> 00:14:45.839
bees uh dealing with ver the varomite is not treatments, is that breeding for livestock that is resistant to

00:14:45.980 --> 00:14:49.180
the variable mite on its own with a parasite.

00:14:49.180 --> 00:14:54.860
So back in 2015, we've been doing some mite washes for monitoring

00:14:54.959 --> 00:14:57.600
Let's do a large scale mite wash.

00:14:57.600 --> 00:15:00.640
Let's mite wash to every colony in our operation.

00:15:00.640 --> 00:15:03.279
About 1500 hives at that time.

00:15:03.339 --> 00:15:07.180
And we did that, and one colony had a might wash count of zero.

00:15:07.180 --> 00:15:10.380
And we go, wow, but let's not treat the Emily and see what happens.

00:15:10.459 --> 00:15:13.819
And we've treated all the rest of our colonies appropriately

00:15:13.839 --> 00:15:20.240
And came back months later and that same colony again had a might wash Canada Zero and continued that for the year.

00:15:20.240 --> 00:15:23.120
So we named that colony Queen Zero.

00:15:23.120 --> 00:15:24.720
And what that was a

00:15:25.320 --> 00:15:27.720
Aha moment for us.

00:15:27.720 --> 00:15:36.520
You go, oh my god, we have a colony that has all the necessary genetics to completely control Varroa on its own.

00:15:36.520 --> 00:15:37.480
That means

00:15:37.740 --> 00:15:41.260
That's a starting point for a selective breeding problem.

00:15:41.260 --> 00:15:43.020
We don't have to bring in outside genetics.

00:15:43.020 --> 00:15:44.300
We don't have to invent anything new.

00:15:44.300 --> 00:15:46.860
We don't have to wait for some wild mutation

00:15:47.060 --> 00:15:50.580
Those genetics already exist in our breeding program.

00:15:50.580 --> 00:15:53.300
All we need to do is select from them.

00:15:53.300 --> 00:15:57.140
So that's what we've been doing since 2015.

00:15:57.020 --> 00:16:01.820
is mitewashing all of our colonies in the spring in the summer.

00:16:01.820 --> 00:16:06.940
We all you have to allow grower to build up enough that you can select.

00:16:06.940 --> 00:16:11.660
So you can't select if everybody's a mite washed out of one.

00:16:10.759 --> 00:16:14.600
You have to wait until some might wash counts, go up to like 15 or so.

00:16:14.600 --> 00:16:19.880
And then at that point, you can select between the zero counts and the fifteen counts.

00:16:19.740 --> 00:16:29.500
You can then treat all the ones that need treatment, but on the ones that are stub zero counts, you put a tag on the top and say this is a potential breeder.

00:16:29.640 --> 00:16:34.520
will follow up and we won't treat you unless your mite wash count goes up.

00:16:34.520 --> 00:16:42.680
So at the end of the and so next might wash count uh month later, you're gonna eliminate some of the potential breeders as their counts went up.

00:16:42.360 --> 00:16:50.120
So at the end of the season, all the ones that had maintained zero or food to zero for the entire year, they would be potential breeders

00:16:50.520 --> 00:17:05.000
from which after almond pollination we can pick out the best of the best, the the strongest, the ones that be the most honey, that um very, very gentle, but that also maintain bite counts.

00:17:04.660 --> 00:17:06.900
So I can hand it over to Eric now.

00:17:06.900 --> 00:17:15.620
We work together to maintain this program and we can talk later about how we worked with Barry Oliveras to make this doc available to the public.

00:17:15.579 --> 00:17:24.699
Eric, can I first just ask how difficult is it when all of a sudden instead of doing a sample of a yard, you're sampling the entire yard?

00:17:24.699 --> 00:17:28.459
Was that a difficult transition for you and your brother?

00:17:28.240 --> 00:17:29.680
Oh, it was more than difficult.

00:17:29.680 --> 00:17:37.360
It was extremely frustrating and and it just at first ate up so much time.

00:17:37.360 --> 00:17:37.680
And

00:17:37.860 --> 00:17:43.299
you'd start falling I mean, everybody knows a a day is a week, a week is a month in beekeeping.

00:17:43.299 --> 00:17:51.860
And, you know, we were spending weeks and weeks doing mite washes and we'd fall behind, you know, you get syrup on late, you get pollen sub on late

00:17:51.919 --> 00:18:02.000
And at first I just it was a hard thing to swallow and wrap my head around that this was this is what we needed to be doing and it was constantly frustrating that we're

00:18:02.240 --> 00:18:09.440
you know, not giving the things the bees obviously needed to survive and to thrive for doing all these might washes, but

00:18:09.760 --> 00:18:23.440
Then after a few years, you know, of not just finding one or two hives that had these low counts and were still great hives that we started seeing, you know, tens and then twenties and and now we're seeing the vast majority of the hives

00:18:23.419 --> 00:18:25.740
that are maintaining these low counts.

00:18:25.740 --> 00:18:30.539
And we've also streamlined the process on mite washing where it's not taking us nearly as long.

00:18:30.539 --> 00:18:36.539
We're we're down to you know as low as 30 seconds to 45 seconds per hive.

00:18:36.060 --> 00:18:43.020
With a crew of four guys out doing these mite washes by using the agitators that my father has made over the years.

00:18:43.020 --> 00:18:46.060
I think we're on version 12 or something like that

00:18:46.400 --> 00:18:48.720
So it it's it's really fast.

00:18:48.720 --> 00:18:54.480
We've we figured out ways to input all the information into spreadsheets using color-coded

00:18:54.740 --> 00:19:01.860
Cups and blocks, we keep everything straight, there's no confusion, nobody really even has to speak about what's going on.

00:19:01.860 --> 00:19:04.020
It's it's all streamlined and

00:19:04.240 --> 00:19:12.640
we just get through the might washes really quick and have integrated it into part of our you know our yearly our work our what we do for the operations.

00:19:12.640 --> 00:19:13.920
What's of interest

00:19:14.419 --> 00:19:25.059
is that it actually saves us money now to do the mite washes because if you're gonna use the legal treatments, they're quite expensive for Varroa

00:19:25.440 --> 00:19:33.840
The money that we save by not having to treat colonies that do not need treatment more than pays for the laborer to do the mite washes

00:19:34.060 --> 00:19:38.300
because we got the our cost per mite wash down tremendously.

00:19:38.300 --> 00:19:42.940
So the key thing for this is the agitators and the

00:19:43.519 --> 00:19:50.559
program that we use to do rapid fire might wash, I call it um smoke it hot might washing.

00:19:50.559 --> 00:19:50.880
And

00:19:51.320 --> 00:20:02.280
We have a uh one of our workers, uh Jake, who is producing these agitators and starting to sell them now to other bee breeders worldwide so they could actually follow and

00:20:02.640 --> 00:20:05.760
and do my washes at very l low cost.

00:20:06.080 --> 00:20:07.280
This is a critical component.

00:20:07.440 --> 00:20:12.800
You have to be able to do my washes at a at a low cost.

00:20:12.740 --> 00:20:16.420
And your website shares all of this information.

00:20:16.420 --> 00:20:19.540
You have a page dedicated to smoking hot mite washes.

00:20:19.540 --> 00:20:26.260
Yeah, but I have actually I've summarized everything in five articles that are now up, you know

00:20:26.540 --> 00:20:39.420
Available on my website going from the beginning of the concept clear through the implementation by yourself, how any beekeeper anywhere in the world who wants to start a such a pretty program can do it

00:20:39.620 --> 00:20:47.620
with the reality check that unless you have a lot of hides yourself or a bunch of neighboring beekeepers to can join you

00:20:47.840 --> 00:20:49.760
it's not realistic they can do it.

00:20:49.760 --> 00:21:01.600
So at our local club here in the California foothills, when we have our club meeting, I said how many people would like to be engaged in having our county being the first county

00:21:01.820 --> 00:21:08.780
in the United States that has all treatment free bees, you know, resistant stock.

00:21:08.780 --> 00:21:10.380
Everybody goes, wow, that'd be great.

00:21:10.380 --> 00:21:15.980
So if you can get all of the beekeepers in the area to cooperate, you don't have to do it alone.

00:21:15.740 --> 00:21:21.740
So there are a number of other counties in California or few a few other ones that have decided to do the same thing.

00:21:21.900 --> 00:21:23.020
They're now bringing in

00:21:23.519 --> 00:21:28.799
large quantities of stock, it can be our stock and it's not about our stock.

00:21:28.799 --> 00:21:30.960
It could be whatever stock you start with.

00:21:30.960 --> 00:21:32.799
As long as everybody agrees

00:21:32.940 --> 00:21:34.299
to this to the same stock.

00:21:34.380 --> 00:21:39.820
The key thing is selector breeding means you stop bringing in new stock.

00:21:39.899 --> 00:21:44.139
So if you bring in new stock you're no longer selecting, you're just mixing everything up.

00:21:43.860 --> 00:21:50.580
You need to start with one stock and then read from that one stock only year after year.

00:21:50.980 --> 00:21:54.580
Let's get back to your stock, named Golden West.

00:21:54.820 --> 00:21:58.659
At what point did you decide hey?

00:21:58.000 --> 00:22:06.080
we can get this out to the market because it's kind of a labor of love because I'm guessing you made Eric

00:22:06.419 --> 00:22:10.500
work even more, correct Eric, in order to to bring it to the market.

00:22:10.500 --> 00:22:12.500
It's not just the let's do the mite washes.

00:22:12.500 --> 00:22:14.419
Now it's like, hey, let's do this.

00:22:14.720 --> 00:22:15.600
Commercially.

00:22:15.600 --> 00:22:16.960
Was it Eric's idea?

00:22:16.960 --> 00:22:17.360
No.

00:22:17.360 --> 00:22:19.360
Uh Eric, you want to teleplomand?

00:22:19.360 --> 00:22:22.560
Okay, once once we started seeing results

00:22:22.440 --> 00:22:30.360
And my father's speaking, you know, around the world and writing all these articles, we started getting a crazy amount of demand for Queens and we're not set up

00:22:30.540 --> 00:22:33.020
like some larger beekeepers to produce queens.

00:22:33.020 --> 00:22:43.020
We we focus on making five frame nucs and we sell those all over the western states, but our operation is just not set up to just just raise queens on a large level like that

00:22:43.220 --> 00:22:48.820
And so we sat down with Oliveras bees with Ray Oliveris and his sons Joshua.

00:22:51.780 --> 00:22:52.020
Right.

00:22:52.340 --> 00:22:56.500
We talked out going into a partnership and what that would look like

00:22:56.640 --> 00:23:07.600
You know, at first it seemed to them a lot easier than it than it would be because all their other stock they're buying or or receiving breeder queens from other beekeepers, they have their crew graft all the

00:23:07.940 --> 00:23:13.940
young larvae raise the virgins and then they go put 'em out in mating nucs and they're just open mated with whatever drones are out there.

00:23:13.940 --> 00:23:21.380
And they're in a pretty densely populated area, so they're getting, you know, mixed up drones from all kinds of other stock.

00:23:21.220 --> 00:23:25.380
So all of their other lines are hybrid lines.

00:23:25.380 --> 00:23:33.780
So in order for us to be willing to go into business with them and have them raise the Golden West queens, we had to figure out a way to

00:23:34.500 --> 00:23:41.860
isolate the mating and saturate the drone pool with only Golden West drones to be mated with Golden West Virgins.

00:23:41.860 --> 00:23:43.620
So that took some planning and

00:23:43.840 --> 00:23:45.520
and time to figure out.

00:23:45.520 --> 00:23:51.120
But after a while we figured out this isolated ranch way outside of Orland.

00:23:51.120 --> 00:23:54.400
And unfortunately it's like a three hour drive for us.

00:23:54.240 --> 00:23:59.040
But it it's isolated enough and it's large enough that there's no other bees around.

00:23:59.040 --> 00:24:04.480
So we brought a large portion of our operation down there the first year to provide the drones.

00:24:04.160 --> 00:24:17.680
at this big fifty thousand acre ranch and we set up about six thousand mating nucs at five different locations and we worked down there all summer with them and they did all the grafting and and the mating nucs and we provided the Jones and

00:24:17.560 --> 00:24:19.240
and helped it out together.

00:24:19.240 --> 00:24:28.840
And now at this point, since it keeps growing, we got another ranch that's even bigger, and we re-queened a large portion of their operation with Golden West queens.

00:24:28.660 --> 00:24:43.460
and I'm in charge of going down and doing all the mite washes on their hives because now at this point we're seeing such good results with it that we're able to kind of do the opposite of what we started doing of where you're looking for the couple hives that were the good ones.

00:24:43.540 --> 00:24:53.460
We are now looking for the couple hives that are showing traits that we don't like, whether that's temperament or production or whatever we're looking for.

00:24:53.460 --> 00:24:57.380
So I'm able to go through, we do might washes on every single one of their hives

00:24:57.260 --> 00:24:59.419
We pull out anything that has any mites.

00:24:59.419 --> 00:25:06.539
Um this year we did it in I think September because when we were going down in July and August we just weren't seeing any mites.

00:25:06.539 --> 00:25:06.780
So

00:25:06.679 --> 00:25:14.440
Like my father was saying, we have to wait until some hives are showing that they have some mites or else there's there's no difference to to weed anything out

00:25:14.560 --> 00:25:26.720
So by September, October, there was a small portion of the hives that had started to grow some mites, and then I can clearly mark those and then their crew pulls them off the pallets and separates those out and they can still run those hives, but they're just

00:25:26.820 --> 00:25:29.700
not in the the stock for the drone pool.

00:25:29.700 --> 00:25:37.220
And we also pull out any hives that you know weren't growing well, weren't producing honey well, weren't producing bees well.

00:25:37.120 --> 00:25:44.800
And unfortunately it was only about five or ten percent of the amount of hives that we re-queened with Golden West that were showing these negative trades.

00:25:44.800 --> 00:25:45.120
So

00:25:45.179 --> 00:25:54.299
We pulled all those out and now they're in these big ranches and they have enough drones to put out I think it's eighteen or nineteen thousand mating meeks this year.

00:25:54.299 --> 00:25:54.620
And

00:25:55.040 --> 00:26:00.080
We're producing a bunch of queens to get 'em out to all the beekeepers that are interested in running our stock.

00:26:00.080 --> 00:26:06.480
You mentioned a couple times on the drones, and often I I think in many discussions the focus is all on the queens.

00:26:06.460 --> 00:26:11.420
But how difficult is it maintaining the drone population and at the right locations?

00:26:11.420 --> 00:26:13.660
How much energy is put into that?

00:26:13.660 --> 00:26:14.860
Well, it's quite a bit.

00:26:14.860 --> 00:26:16.700
I mean, it's the same as our operation.

00:26:16.700 --> 00:26:25.179
I'm now not only might washing our, you know, fifteen hundred or two thousand hives multiple times throughout the season, now I'm doing it with their operation as well.

00:26:25.179 --> 00:26:26.299
And that keeps growing.

00:26:26.299 --> 00:26:27.659
Last year I think it was

00:26:27.660 --> 00:26:31.820
twenty five hundred or three thousand hives they started with and this year will probably be double that.

00:26:31.820 --> 00:26:35.660
So I had to take my crew down and do all the mite washes and all that.

00:26:35.660 --> 00:26:40.380
But it doesn't have to be quite as stringent as what we do for the breeder stock.

00:26:40.000 --> 00:26:42.720
because it's we're feeding the drone population.

00:26:42.720 --> 00:26:46.000
We're not looking for for breeders to graft off of.

00:26:46.000 --> 00:26:48.080
We're just looking for drones to mate.

00:26:47.740 --> 00:26:55.260
So we're able to go down and do one set or maybe two sets of mite washes on their operation and call out anything that we don't like

00:26:55.260 --> 00:26:57.100
and then set them up for the drones.

00:26:57.179 --> 00:27:00.539
They can run those hives themselves normally for the rest of the season.

00:27:00.539 --> 00:27:06.059
They can put mite treatments on it or whatever, because we've already earmarked all the hives that we want pulled out of that drone pool

00:27:06.040 --> 00:27:14.440
Let's take this opportunity to take a quick break and we'll be right back after these words from our sponsors.

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Welcome back, everybody.

00:28:47.160 --> 00:28:57.080
Eric or Randy, or both of you, I would love it if you commented on the change in the operation with the genetics based upon

00:28:57.720 --> 00:29:12.360
how you need to treat the bees differently because a lot of beekeepers are just used to treating and and I when I say treat, I I don't mean chemicals, but they're used to managing bees that are loaded with mites at one point or another in the season.

00:29:12.320 --> 00:29:16.080
and it changes the dynamics of the beekeeping season.

00:29:16.080 --> 00:29:19.760
But when you have colonies with low mite pressure

00:29:19.760 --> 00:29:21.520
those bees can go.

00:29:21.520 --> 00:29:26.080
They can grow, they can make honey, and it's really a different type of beekeeping.

00:29:26.080 --> 00:29:27.760
So how have you seen that?

00:29:27.760 --> 00:29:29.600
This is like a step back in time.

00:29:29.600 --> 00:29:34.559
My first twenty four five years at beekeeping, we didn't have Varroa.

00:29:34.620 --> 00:29:35.580
Okay.

00:29:35.580 --> 00:29:43.180

Queen Series: Randy & Eric Oliver on Selective Breeding and Varroa-Resistant Bees (384)

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