Our Queens

A beekeeper holding a honeycomb frame with bees on it, outdoors with trees and sky in the background.
A frame of accepted grafts soon to become queen bees.

Breeder Queens

All our breeder queens originate from selected stock sourced from the UK, Germany, and Denmark. Peter Stoffen, Duncan Simmons, Lutz Eggert and our own Somerset selected breeders.

We specifically breed Buckfast queens, selected for their calm temperament, prolific honey production, and strong disease resistance.

Rearing Process

  1. We graft day‑old larvae from breeder queens into queen cups.

  2. These cups are placed into well‑fed, queen‑less colonies, where bees feed them royal jelly and build the queen cells.

Queen bees on honeycomb with honey and cells

Once the bees have fully sealed the queen cells, we transfer these cells into our incubator. From here we either let cells hatch and sell them as virgin queens or we transfer cells into mating boxes or nucs.

Close-up of a person's hand with a honey bee resting on it, and a background showing a display of honey bee queens in test tubes.
Mating nucs out in the field.

Picked, Marked & Dispatched

Once our queens have successfully mated and we are happy with the brood, queens are carefully picked and marked ready for collection or next day UK delivery.