Our Apis mellifera ligustica (Italian Honey Bee) and Apis mellifera carnica (Carniolan honey bee) mated queen genetic lines come from queen cells that are carefully grafted from our very own selected breeder queens by our highly skilled and experienced staff members.

The queen cells are placed into strong starter colonies that are fed natural pollen, MegaBee™ and sugar syrup to help promote vigorous pupae growth. Queen cells are then transferred to strong finisher colonies and again fed with natural pollen, MegaBee™ and sugar syrup to promote vigorous growth and wellbeing.

Queen cells are transferred either straight in to nuc’s or into the incubators ready for sale. We only allow queen cells of a certain size, and weight to make it to our nuc’s or incubators, all other cells are culled out. We believe this strict process allows us to control the quality of our queens from the start.

Our queens are left in their hives for a minimum of one month before being caged and sent to our customers. This ensures that the queen is performing well, allows enough time to highlight any potential issues that an individual queen may have, and allows time for her to produce the right level of pheromones. Pheromones are a crucial part of requeening if the queen lacks certain amounts of pheromone levels the hive may not accept her into the new colony.

• All Queens are colour marked for easy identification within the hive. This saves you time during hive inspections and instantly tells you the age of your queen.
• We only supply queens from our top breeder queens that are proven to be productive in the field, produce strong healthy hives and show signs of good hygienic behaviour. 
• From breeder queen selection, grafting and raising our queens you can be sure that each step of the process is done right, and with care.

ApiLife Limited provides a replacement, refund, or credit on all Queen purchases if:

• The mated queens/ virgin queens are lost in transit to your base of operation.
• Some or all mated queens/ virgin queens have died in transit.
• Mated queen fails to lay after two (2) weeks after introduction.
• If the order for mated queens/ virgin queens is over 250 in one shipment, a ApiLife Limited team member will personally deliver that shipment, nationwide. This is to ensure that they arrive safely.