Meet the Appalachian Queen Bees, LLC. Team
About Our Founder
After operating New River Honey Bees, LLC. for 10 years, Jason has now taken all the business experience gained from New River Honey Bees and rolled it into a new brand, with a new business plan for 2024. Welcome to Appalachian Queen Bees, LLC.
Jason Bragg ~ Founder
Over the years Jason has attended and taught many Instrumental Insemination workshops, and was originally taught by Sue Coby of WSU, and Garrett Dodds of the USDA in Advanced Instrumental Insemination of Honeybee Queens. Jason now produces some of the top ii breeder queens available on the market. Jason started doing Instrumental Insemination around 2014-15.
Jason also maintains one of the few privately owned and maintained drone semen cryo units in the US. Having been taught drone semen collection and cryopreservation by Brandon Hopkins of WSU around 2016-17. Dr. Hopkins developed our current method of cryopreservation and was one of the first professors to successfully store honeybee drone semen cryogenically.
Jason currently holds a Master’s Degree in Business Administration, a Bachelor of Science Degree in Information Technology, along with many other specialty trainings and numerous certifications.
Jason is the current President of the West Virginia Queen Producers Initiative Co-Op. www.mountainstatequeen.com
About Our Products
We currently offer Artificially Inseminated Breeder Queens, Open Mated Queens, Virgin Queens, Cells, and sometimes NUCs. We offer four different lines of honeybees: AQB-Buckfast, AQB-Carniolans, AQB-Italians, and AQB-Caucasians. Our breeding program has a foundation from breeders of some of the top programs in the US. We actively maintain, evaluate, and selectively breed from the following stock: Sue Coby's New World Carniolan Lines (heavy on the Slovenian lineage), Washington State Universities Caucasian Lines, Joe Latshaw's Lines, VP Queen Bees Lines, Cory Steven's Lines, Johnny Thompson's Lines, and Buckfast Lines imported from Canada before the borders closed. Our AQB-Carniolan and AQB-Italian Lines are heavily selected and bred via Artificial Insemination to exhibit strong VSH traits! Also known as Varroa Sensitive Hygiene, or Mite Resistance... We maintain all of our breeding stock through Artificial Insemination to ensure exact crosses and help finetune the traits that we strive for...
NEW for 2024, we are now beginning to offer some of our 3D Prints and Designs for Beekeeping and Queen Rearing!