Vaccinated Queen Bees are produced at the Meyer Bees apiary using Dalan’s AFB bee vaccine (American Foulbrood). We have several honey bee queen races to choose from. Selected queens are mated and laying a good brood pattern before being vaccinated. The queens are marked with the current years color (white, blue, yellow, red, green) along with a gold dot to distinguish that the bee vaccine has been administered.
Dalan’s bee vaccine is delivered orally. The vaccine is ingested by the Queen Bee, and vaccine fragments are passed on to larvae for protection against diseases. The Dalan AFB honey bee vaccine technology exposes queen bees to inactive (i.e., “dead”) AFB bacteria, which enables the larvae hatched in the hive to resist infection.
How does the bee vaccine work ? The vaccine works via a biological phenomenon known as Transgenerational Immune Priming (TGIP). The vaccine, containing a killed pathogen, is administered orally to the maternal insect—the queen bee. Attendants caged with the queen are fed queen candy containing the vaccine. Work carried out in Dalan’s laboratories has indicated that the attendants digest the vaccine and produce royal jelly containing vaccine particles. The royal jelly is fed to the queen, and as she ingests it, pieces of the vaccine are transported via her body fat to her ovaries where it is deposited in the eggs. The developing larvae are exposed to the vaccine and start to build up immunity before they hatch.
Bee Vaccine Testing Results:
- Queen survival – in tests, immune priming showed no negative impact on queen fitness
- Honey quality – the tests also show no negative impact on honey
- The queen bee vaccine is chemical free, non-GMO, and organic
- Note that the immunity is passed onto the queen’s offspring, but a new queen born from the hive will not be able to pass this immunity onto her offspring. The immunity lasts one generation
- New queens born from the hive would need to be replaced with a vaccinated queen or removed from the hive to be vaccinated
Honeybee Vaccine Key Benefits:
- Primes larvae against mortality caused by AFB
- Proven safety
- Easy to use and no prescription required
- ** BONUS ** Learn more about new experimental data showing how vaccination significantly reduced DWV-B in a large commercial yard in American Bee Journal
- Dalan bee vaccine is is conditionally licensed by the USDA-CVB and CFIA-CCVB for the vaccination of queen honeybees to prime larvae against mortality due to Paenibacillus larvae (cause of American Foulbrood disease in honeybees)
Meyer Bees will have a selection of vaccinated packages bees available for the early 2026 bee season as well as individual queens.
Randy Oliver’s research on Transgenerational Immune Priming is at this link.
Find out how Queen Bees Naturally ‘Vaccinate’ Their Offspring at this link. How bees vaccinate their babies and why understanding this is important to humans. Image credit: Sabine Deviche.
