Helping honey bees help themselves

🐝 Building a Brighter Future for Bees

At Bee Genetics, we’re driving the future of sustainable beekeeping by developing honey bees with strong resistance to Varroa mites. For the past three years, our expert breeders have focused on enhancing the resilience of locally adapted bee populations through early selection tools—most notably, for hygienic behaviour triggered by unhealthy brood odour. This highly sensitive trait enables bees to detect, uncap, and remove diseased brood, helping protect against pests and pathogens from within the hive.

As Varroa continues to spread through our apiaries, we’re expanding our toolkit with additional selection methods like mite population growth assessments and Varroa Sensitive Hygiene (VSH) testing. These efforts help us identify and propagate queens from colonies showing superior natural resistance.

Alongside Varroa traits, our breeding program continues to prioritise gentleness, productivity, and resilience to other common diseases—ensuring that the bees of tomorrow are as easy to manage as they are genetically robust.