Northern Queen Bees

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     Welcome to my honeybee business! In 2020 I started keeping bees by building a Layens hive and installing a purchased package of bees. Throughout that season, I watched the package colony weaken, dwindle away and die out by Fall. My experience watching this colony of southern, commercial bees fail led me to learn about catching feral swarms and doing bee cut-outs. I did my first cut-out late in that first season and started building swarm traps in preparation for my second beekeeping season.

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     In my second year as a beekeeper I started catching local, feral swarms in my swarm traps and quickly discovered that these locally adapted, feral bees were much more robust, and capable of handling the pressures of our Maine environment than the commercial, southern raised bees I had purchased in my first year. Not only were the bees I was catching in my swarm traps better, best of all, they were free! I determined from this point forward to expand my swarm catching operation, and learn queen rearing, so I could start breeding from the most successful colonies.

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     This determination led me into my third year and got me rolling as a queen producer, and thus started Northern Queen Bees. The mission of Northern Queen Bees is to produce queens from my best performing, never treated, overwintered colonies, and supply them to beekeepers looking for robust, northern adapted bees.

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     I hope that as I continue to develop Northern Queen Bees, I get the chance to meet other enthusiastic beekeepers in Maine, and from away, and continue to share in my excitement for beekeeping.

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-Richard

 

 

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