Our queens owe their exceptional hardiness to careful preservation of pioneer stock originally introduced to the remote Olympic Peninsula of Washington State by early settlers over a century ago. These unmanaged feral colonies have thrived in continual isolation, adapting to the harsh fungus-rich environment of the world′s largest temperate rainforest.

Decades of natural selection, in these cool damp conditions have created resilient survivors with excellent mite-resistance, hygienic behavior, and remarkable nosema tolerance, associated with their extreme pollen hoarding behavior

All our queens are grafted from untreated breeder stock, and are naturally-mated to our Wild Survivor Drone lines which are maintained to be the predominant genetics of our closed-population mating yards.
By regular inclusion of VSH/SMR and USDA Primorsky Russian stock acquired from proven reliable sources, we consistently produce a hardy 3-way cross that exhibits the most desirable traits of each.

For more about the history and details surrounding our feral stock, read more here…