“If more beekeepers choose the route of trying to ‘improve what we have got’ rather than that of constant importation, the long-term prospects for beekeeping in this country will be brighter ... we could witness a steady improvement in the quality of our stock.”

Jo Widdicombe 

The Principles of Bee Improvement

Raising queen cells

We are indebted to BIBBA President Roger Patterson for his generous encouragement and wealth of experience enabling us to start out on this venture.

Using a variety of techniques to raise queen cells including the Ben Harden and Demaree methods we select desirable breeder queens and graft their larvae into specially made frames, placing them in the cell raising colonies. Once capped, we use roller cages to protect the developing queens and either leave them in the cell raisers or place them in incubators to emerge. Once emerged, they can be allocated to mating nuclei ready for mating.

Queen and drone mating

We use a range of min-nucs (Apideas) and small mating nucleus hives positioned across a number of choice sites in the South Downs to maximise on the number of virgin queens which become successfully mated.

Our drone producing colonies are built up well in advance to increase the number of drones with favourable genetic traits being available for mating at just the right time. Natural mating of honeybees is always a lottery but we try to stack the odds in our favour!