2023 PRE-ORDER UK Bred Open Mated Queens

Description

I have used many different types of queens from Carniolans to Buckfast and even worked with Italian strains. I have never found one that I am totally happy with and so like many bee farmer have put in pace a breeding program to improve my stock. As such these queens cannot truly be classified as Buckfast or Carniolan rather Locally adapted to our bee farming setup.

These queens have been selected for a few criteria:

• National Brood Box – We run only single national brood boxes so a queen that is able to stay put in a smaller brood box while maintaining as high a population as possible is key.
• Yields – We are a honey farm, honey yields are important and we hold data on all of our sites and colonies. Our 2022 yield per colony was 81lb based on the start of the year colony count and we also doubled our colony numbers.
• Temperament – We run beekeeping courses so having colonies that are easy to work and and handle also remains important to us.

We are always working towards better queens and each year select the top 6 or 8 stocks to breed from. They are open mated in our apiaries which have ample drones to ensure good mating and therefore improving the queens longevity.

Producing queens in the UK can be tricky with the weather so we aim to have pre-ordered queens ready by the end of May however a cold/wet spring may push us back slightly.

The Queens will be marked with the appropriate colour for the year (Red- 2023) and can be clipped on request. All queens will be posted on a Tuesday morning unless you contact us to arrange a specific delivery date. We will aim to meet your selected delivery date however as queen production relies heavily on the weather we may have to delay your order, if this is the case we will be in touch

Please note – you cannot start a colony with a queen only, you require either a full hive, package or a nuc.

Please purchase queens in a separate order to other items and select next day delivery at checkout 

Order more 5 or more queens and get a discount of 3%. Order 10 or more queens and get a discount of 6%.

For orders over 5 queens please get in touch with us – HERE

Queen Issues

If any queen is found dead on arrival this needs to be reported to us within 24 hours of delivery. We will expect a photo of the queen and attendants in the original unopened cage before we will be able to send out a out replacement free of charge.