Bees For Sale

If you’re looking for bees for sale or queen bees for sale from a UK breeder with over 15 years of bee breeding experience you are in the right place.

We produce both buckfast queen bees for sale and Northumberland Dark bees for sale from our facility in Haltwhistle, Northumberland.

Queen bees are for sale and pre-order throughout the year, along with virgin queens, queen cells, nucleus colonies and package bees. All our bees come with a drone layer guarantee safeguarding you in the event a queen becomes a drone layer.

Queen Bees For Sale

Queen Bees are bred by Northumberland Honey Co on the Cumbria/ Northumberland border in the Irthing Valley.

We offer two different types of bee, Northumberland Dark Bee or Northumberland Buckfast from VSH (varroa sensitive and hygienic breeder queens)

For full line information, origin and performance information see our dedicated queens for sale page / queen rearing page.

Each season we go through lengthy selection processes and daughter testing to bring forward only the best queens of our stock for breeding from, selecting from over 250 colonies.

We also guarantee all queens if they become drone layers within the first 8 weeks. We pride ourselves on customer service and follow up.

Order Process

Order via the online shop, link below – select your chosen delivery week and delivery day. When we have queens available for next day availability this can be selected on the order and we’ll ship asap for next day delivery. Order by 2pm for same day despatch.

Mated, Virgin and Instrumentally Inseminated Queens are available.

Mated Queen Pricing From April 2024

1-2 Queens £46

3-5 Queens £43

6-10 Queens £37
11-20 Queens £36
21-30 Queens £35
40-50 Queens £34

50+ Queens £32

Virgin Queens
£19 each

Trade accounts for multiple purchases also available, please call or e-mail to discuss.

Nucleus Colonies & Full Colonies

Bees for Sale as Nucleus colonies cover 5 frames on British Standard National Frames.

Overwintered nucleus colonies for the 2024 season are available to pre-order, as these are limited number please order in good time. We may be able to provide 14 x 12 and langstroth colonies. Please contact us if you require these formats. Nucleus colonies can be pre-ordered via the shop page – link below.

Please note, nucleus colonies are for collection only on the date on the order.

Package Bees For Sale

Package bees are offered for sale for collection at the end of May each season. Made from our own bees and queens we make these packages from 1.5kg of young bees.

Perfect for stocking foundationless hive systems, such as warre and top bar hives, package bees are very versatile. They can also be used for starting bees on completely fresh combs.

Package bees are produced by us only on limited numbers each year as we utilise a significant number of young bees ourselves to stock our own mating nucs for queen rearing. However we are always increasing the number of package bees we produce to help provide a quality source of package bees from the UK and help to reduce reliance on imports of bees generally.

Please note:

Package bees are now released for pre-orders for the 2024 season. Link below. Our order book for package bees fills quite quickly so please order in good time.

Package Bees are for collection only on the date prescribed.

Disease Assurance Scheme in Honeybees (DASH)

Northumberland Honey Co are members of the Bee Farmers Association, and are members of the Disease Assurance Scheme in Honeybees ensuring the highest possible quality of bees.

Northumberland is also lucky in that it has one of the lowest rates of notifiable brood disease in the country with both European and American Foulbrood virtually unheard of in our area. You can review this on the disease incidence map on bee base.

Coupled with our closed system of not collecting swarms, bringing bees in or migrating our bees outside of our area we are hopeful to retain this low disease status.