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• You get a certificate showing you have placed the order
• You phone or email us to confirm wehave the correct address (phone is better)
• We confirm your phone/email
• We contact you about 2-3 weeks before the bees are ready to confirm a rough time of despatch
• If you are having your bees delivered
  1. Wephone you to confirm the delivery date
  2. You agree to be at the delivery address when the bees are delivered
  3. We collect the bees from the apiary the day before you are to  receive them (around 4pm)
  4. We pack the bees securely and take them to the post office and send the bees registered post
  5. We email/phone you with the Royal Mail tracking number
• If you are collecting  your bees
  1. We arrange a mutually suitable dateforyou to collect your bees
  2. You come to our  unit in the evening when all the foragers are back at the colony
  3. We take  you to the apiary and open up your nucleus so you can see that they are OK
  4. We pack up andsealthe nucleus
  5. You take the nucleus home

The Buckfast bee is a honey bee developed by "Brother Adam", (born Karl Kehrle in 1898 in Germany), who was in charge of beekeeping at Buckfast Abbey. In the early 20thcentury bee populations werebeing decimated by Isle of Wight disease. This condition, later called "acarine" disease, after theacarine parasitic mite that invaded the bees' tracheal tubes and shortened their lives, was killing off thousands ofcoloniesin the British Isles in the early part of the 20th century.

Brother Adam discovered, that the surviving colonies were crosses between italian and native black bee. Buckfast bees' originis from these few surviving hives. Brother Adam became interested in honeybee breeding and he started in very earlystages to use the isolated Dartmoor mating station for breeding purposes. There he could mate selected queens with selected drones. Drones and queens only mate inflight, and they can flyover10 km in searching for each other. Brother Adam also became interestedin the various honeybee races in the world andmade several long journeys to Europe, Africa and Middle-East searching for pure races or interesting local stocks. His book "In Search of the Best Strains of Bees" tells about this huge and very  important work. From these journeys and with the help of new contacts he imported new stock from other nations. Every new bee strain or bee race was first crossed with the existing Buckfast Bee. The new desired qualities were, in most cases, passed on to the new generation and the new combination was then made stable with further breeding work. Every crossing with a new race took about 10yearsbefore the desired genes were fixed in the strain. Little by little-this work took him half a century - he managed to create this vigorous, parasite-resistant honey bee known as the Buckfastbee. It started as a hybrid, but today it is a man made beerace among theother more natural ones. However, the extensive import of bees and queens,which started in the second half of the 19th century, has mixed all bee populations living near human settlement.

An extremely popular choice for beekeepers due to their many favourable qualities. Buckfast bees do not run on the frames, fly in cool weather conditions and are not prone to stealing, instead they are excellent honey producers and additionally, extremely gentle (some authorities rate them higher than the Italians in most categories). Colonies are noted for their gentle behaviour, high levels of honey production, lack of swarming tendencies and hygienic hive conditions. 

Please note that the Buckfast queens we sell may be imported.

 
Call us NOW on 01691 672869 for helpful and friendly advice