all our queens come from British Buckfast queen breeders which there are only a handful of UK queen breeders.

However British bred queens are available a little later on in the season than imported queens from Europe this does throw some challenges and can be a little more expensive with the British queens

But on the plus side is that the British Queens are more suited for our climate as to the imported european queen bee however the european queens do adapt quite well.

There are a few challenges for the UK queen breeder one major thing is the weather as we know we cannot predict the weather which can have an impact on getting hold of British bred queen bees.

Poor weather which was a massive issue this year 2024 the breeders tested the queens extensively before sending out to make sure they were still of high quality and correctly mated which delayed delivery of queens and made even more of a demand for the queen breeders and for customers.

In the past we have used european bred queens and have been very good brood & honey producers and we do still have them in good number of hives and nucs we are increaseing the amout of british queen stocks in our hives & nucs also replacing some of the older queens, hopefully and eventually replace all to british queens.