What's interesting about the VSH too is the fact that anyone can breed good stock with local drones.
From Glenn Apiaries
http://members.aol.com/queenb95/smr.html
"The best way to get the maximum amount of the trait into a line of bees is to begin with a pure
VSH/SMR breeder queen so her daughters mate with your local drones. Workers from pure VSH/SMR
queens have a hyper-hygienic behavior where their workers remove more brood than is necessary or
desirable. This will show up as a deterioration of the breeder's brood pattern after about six weeks.
The regular addition of frames of sealed brood from other colonies will keep the colony strong.
Daughters queens of pure VSH/SMR breeders who are out crossed by natural mating have good
brood production and an acceptable level of mite resistance:"
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