New Website Launch & 2025 Bee Orders Now Open!

[BS Honey Bees]

We are excited to announce the launch of our brand-new website, and we are now taking orders for live bees for the 2025 season!

At BS Honey Bees Ltd, we are proud to be a Trustpilot 5 Star Rated business, and our new site is designed to make your experience smoother than ever. With our reputation for quality and reliability, we are committed to providing beekeepers across the UK with the best bees and queens available.

What’s Available for 2025?​

• Collected Overwintered Nucs (Available from April 2025)
  View Product
• Posted Overwintered Nucs (Available from April 2025)
  View Product
• Collected Spring Nucs (Available from May - Late June 2025)
  View Product
• Posted Spring Nucs (Available from May - Late June 2025)
  View Product

Queen Bees​

We also offer a selection of Queen bees, including F1 Buckfast, Carniolan, and Essex Buckfast, with convenient date selections starting as early as late March 2025.
View Queens Collection

Why Choose Us?​

Our reputation speaks for itself. We’ve been serving the beekeeping community for over a decade, and our bees and queens are trusted by beekeepers throughout the UK. With high demand and early dates getting booked fast, we strongly encourage you to place your orders early to avoid disappointment.

Visit our new website today and secure your bees for 2025: BS Honey Bees Ltd.

Quality bees, reliable service, and 5-star customer satisfaction – that’s our commitment to you.

 

[Paulypaul]

Nice looking website. Looks to be a little bit easier to locate what I'm looking for, and happy to see you retained those images of bees on the white background.

While you're here.... do you have any plans to produce a Nat' Poly Nuc Brood Chamber? I ask as currently Maisemore have the monopoly on this product.
Perhaps there's not enough demand to justify you committing to creating your own version(?).
From a consumer perspective, it's usually best when there's a bit of competition in a product sector.
Thanks.

 

[BS Honey Bees]

Hi Paulypaul,

Apologies for the delay in responding—we had a warm, clear, and dry day here in Gloucestershire, so we took full advantage to get around as many colonies as possible to prep them for winter. Today is much the same!

Back in 2017, when we launched our 2 in 1 Poly Nucs, we did design both Super & Brood extensions alongside a plastic Queen excluder. Unfortunately, our infrastructure was a challenge at the time (we were operating from a much smaller premises), and we faced reluctance from the factory to take on any further beehive products.

We’ve also had ongoing issues with the UK factory producing these parts. A few years back, they even threatened to exit the UK beehive market entirely, despite producing all the stock for Maisemore, Beehive Supplies, and (previously) Paynes. With them being the only factory in the UK able to manufacture these, they hold a monopoly, and dealing with them has been nothing short of a nightmare. Frankly, they don’t deserve any continued business.

A shout out to anyone bidding for the Paynes Poly Tool Moulds! Or anyone else considering working with that factory—be prepared for a shock!

I also published a detailed 4-page article on this very issue for The Bee Farmer back in 2022 if you’d like to read more about it.

On a positive note, we do have a great relationship with Maisemore, and they’ve agreed to allow us to stock their boxes in 2025. However, as you rightly pointed out, the pricing point remains a challenge due to the market monopoly held by the factory.

Thanks again for your support and feedback, and I appreciate you raising the topic!

Daniel

 

[OakBees]

Hi Paulypaul,

Apologies for the delay in responding—we had a warm, clear, and dry day here in Gloucestershire, so we took full advantage to get around as many colonies as possible to prep them for winter. Today is much the same!

Back in 2017, when we launched our 2 in 1 Poly Nucs, we did design both Super & Brood extensions alongside a plastic Queen excluder. Unfortunately, our infrastructure was a challenge at the time (we were operating from a much smaller premises), and we faced reluctance from the factory to take on any further beehive products.

We’ve also had ongoing issues with the UK factory producing these parts. A few years back, they even threatened to exit the UK beehive market entirely, despite producing all the stock for Maisemore, Beehive Supplies, and (previously) Paynes. With them being the only factory in the UK able to manufacture these, they hold a monopoly, and dealing with them has been nothing short of a nightmare. Frankly, they don’t deserve any continued business.

A shout out to anyone bidding for the Paynes Poly Tool Moulds! Or anyone else considering working with that factory—be prepared for a shock!

I also published a detailed 4-page article on this very issue for The Bee Farmer back in 2022 if you’d like to read more about it.

On a positive note, we do have a great relationship with Maisemore, and they’ve agreed to allow us to stock their boxes in 2025. However, as you rightly pointed out, the pricing point remains a challenge due to the market monopoly held by the factory.

Thanks again for your support and feedback, and I appreciate you raising the topic!

Daniel

Hi Daniel, hope you're well.

Do you have a link to the article please?.

Thanks
Neil
Oak Apiary Honey Farm

 

[Paulypaul]

Hi Paulypaul,

Apologies for the delay in responding—we had a warm, clear, and dry day here in Gloucestershire, so we took full advantage to get around as many colonies as possible to prep them for winter. Today is much the same!

Back in 2017, when we launched our 2 in 1 Poly Nucs, we did design both Super & Brood extensions alongside a plastic Queen excluder. Unfortunately, our infrastructure was a challenge at the time (we were operating from a much smaller premises), and we faced reluctance from the factory to take on any further beehive products.

We’ve also had ongoing issues with the UK factory producing these parts. A few years back, they even threatened to exit the UK beehive market entirely, despite producing all the stock for Maisemore, Beehive Supplies, and (previously) Paynes. With them being the only factory in the UK able to manufacture these, they hold a monopoly, and dealing with them has been nothing short of a nightmare. Frankly, they don’t deserve any continued business.

A shout out to anyone bidding for the Paynes Poly Tool Moulds! Or anyone else considering working with that factory—be prepared for a shock!

I also published a detailed 4-page article on this very issue for The Bee Farmer back in 2022 if you’d like to read more about it.

On a positive note, we do have a great relationship with Maisemore, and they’ve agreed to allow us to stock their boxes in 2025. However, as you rightly pointed out, the pricing point remains a challenge due to the market monopoly held by the factory.

Thanks again for your support and feedback, and I appreciate you raising the topic!

Daniel

Thank you for your reply. A very interesting and valuable insight into the realities of UK beekeeping product production and retail.

The 1940's genius that designed the National format, not only created a hive standard that's more difficult to make at home than the Langstroth, and a brood box less suited to modern single brood body hive management, they also conjured up a system that's only used by our small (UK) consumer base.

Meaning any National format product can never achieve international appeal, nor the economies of scale that would bring.

The manufacturer of UK National Poly products having a monopoly helps explain why nuc Poly products are so expensive, in comparison to the more complex and larger Abelo (polish) 11 and 12 frame boxes. I expect Abelo uses an overseas manufacturer(?).

 

[BS Honey Bees]

Hi Daniel, hope you're well.

Do you have a link to the article please?.

Thanks
Neil
Oak Apiary Honey Farm

Hi Neil,

Thanks for your interest! The Bee Farmer is a subscription-based magazine, so unfortunately, the article isn’t freely accessible at the moment. However, I’ll arrange to add it to our blog and will send you the link once it’s live on our website. Keep an eye out—I'll make sure you get access.

Best,
Daniel

 

[BS Honey Bees]

Thank you for your reply. A very interesting and valuable insight into the realities of UK beekeeping product production and retail.

The 1940's genius that designed the National format, not only created a hive standard that's more difficult to make at home than the Langstroth, and a brood box less suited to modern single brood body hive management, they also conjured up a system that's only used by our small (UK) consumer base.

Meaning any National format product can never achieve international appeal, nor the economies of scale that would bring.

The manufacturer of UK National Poly products having a monopoly helps explain why nuc Poly products are so expensive, in comparison to the more complex and larger Abelo (polish) 11 and 12 frame boxes. I expect Abelo uses an overseas manufacturer(?).

Hi Paulypaul,

You’re absolutely right. The constraints with the National format mean we’re largely confined to the UK market, which is why manufacturers like Anel (as sold by Gruff) focus solely on Langstroth. Anel even admitted that the UK market for National products is too small to justify the investment—it’s one of those classic examples where we’ve gone our own way here in the UK!

We do push quite a bit of volume, but it’s never enough to get any price break from the factory—they definitely penny-pinch whenever they can.

As for Abelo, you’re spot on. Their hives are indeed produced by Lyson in Poland. While I’m not 100% certain if the factory itself is in Poland, it’s likely somewhere with even cheaper labour costs. Their production method is quite different, relying on a manual process instead of an automated steam injection press, which is what our UK factory uses. The tooling costs for the manual process are lower, but the per-unit cost is higher as it requires manually filling, baking, and removing each batch—this also allows for the integration of plastic components.

There was only one UK-based factory using this manual method in Cheltenham (where we made our full National hives), but they went under due to COVID and Brexit impacts, and even if they hadn’t, the energy crisis would have caught up with them. EPS moulding is incredibly energy-intensive.

So, yes, Lyson’s larger scale and cheaper labour allow them to export to the UK at a competitive price, but it’s definitely a tight margin for Abelo, and their supply chain isn’t as flexible due to the manual nature of their production.

Best,
Daniel

 

[Paulypaul]

Hi Paulypaul,

You’re absolutely right. The constraints with the National format mean we’re largely confined to the UK market, which is why manufacturers like Anel (as sold by Gruff) focus solely on Langstroth. Anel even admitted that the UK market for National products is too small to justify the investment—it’s one of those classic examples where we’ve gone our own way here in the UK!

We do push quite a bit of volume, but it’s never enough to get any price break from the factory—they definitely penny-pinch whenever they can.

As for Abelo, you’re spot on. Their hives are indeed produced by Lyson in Poland. While I’m not 100% certain if the factory itself is in Poland, it’s likely somewhere with even cheaper labour costs. Their production method is quite different, relying on a manual process instead of an automated steam injection press, which is what our UK factory uses. The tooling costs for the manual process are lower, but the per-unit cost is higher as it requires manually filling, baking, and removing each batch—this also allows for the integration of plastic components.

There was only one UK-based factory using this manual method in Cheltenham (where we made our full National hives), but they went under due to COVID and Brexit impacts, and even if they hadn’t, the energy crisis would have caught up with them. EPS moulding is incredibly energy-intensive.

So, yes, Lyson’s larger scale and cheaper labour allow them to export to the UK at a competitive price, but it’s definitely a tight margin for Abelo, and their supply chain isn’t as flexible due to the manual nature of their production.

Best,
Daniel

My local BKA is always keen for potential articles for our monthly newsletter. Would it be OK for me to draft something, e.g. "The challenges of UK National equipment manufacturing" referencing our little exchange here, and have you review it for potential approval, before I submit it?
I only want to reference our chat, with your permission. Thanks