Sven Nordström in Stordalen in Timrå municipality raises a frame from the hive. The bees do not react significantly, but remain around the cells in the compartment. Here it is not honey that applies in the first stage - Sven Nordström breeds bee queens.

- In every cell there is a queen, I have been tricking the bees to breed new queens by making them queenless for a while, he explains.

Interest is growing

The original Nordic bees have been in Sweden since the ice age, but today they are in many places outcompeted by bees that actually belong in southern Europe. In the 1980s a rescue operation was started among beekeepers and now interest in the species among beekeepers is growing, especially in northern Sweden.

"The Nordic bees are adapted to nature and temperature and simply better suited to this environment," says Sven Nordström, who primarily breeds contributions to help the Nordic tribe on the pile.

SEK 500 for a queen

At the same time, each contributing queen becomes valuable.

- I keep some queens and will sell the rest, he says.

The price is somewhere around SEK 500 for a queen.