Beekeeping

The beekeeping of Buckfast Holland consists of approximately 200 production colonies. These are kept in modified Dadant hives. All colonies are provided with so-called “island mated queens”. They are used for both selection and honey production.

Our beekeeping also have about 80 colonies in six-frames Dadant hives and about 200 MiniPlus hives. Mainly our breeding queens are kept in these hives as well as overwintered queens for our own use and for sale.

The colonies are divided over more than 30 apiaries, spread over an area within a radius of 35 km. in the mid-west of the Netherlands.

The Netherlands is a poor country for bees with only a few good honeyflows. We mainly rely on spring flowers and lime trees. To win some extra honey, we travel with some of our hives to Willow, Rapeseed, Spring weed and occasionally also to the heather.

Our colonies are used for honey production and breeding selection. We do not breed queens in large numbers, we go for quality. Because the flow of honey in the Netherlands is not self-evident, this is an important selection criterion for us. The best colonies automatically approve themselves.

For more than ten years, our focus has been on selection and queen breeding. In the footsteps of Brother Adam we traveled to Turkey, Anatolia (2011) and Sinop (2014).

And every year we visit foreign Buckfast breeders. We exchange breeding material with them to set up new Buckfast / drone lines.

The many years of searching for suitable breeding material means that we now have an unique variety of breeding lines and therefore an enormous gene bank. As far as we know unique in Europe.