Our virgin queens 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 more natural pollen, MegaBee™ and sugar syrup to promote vigorous growth and wellbeing. Queen cells are transferred either straight into full depth 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 full depth 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 Virgin queens are kept in our full depth nuc’s for up to a week before being sent to our customers, this helps the virgin queen produce a good level of vigour and pheromones, helping her to be accepted into the new colony.

• 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.

The genetic diversities that we include into our genetic lines:

• Production and Hygienic Behaviour Traits.
• Temperament.
• Vigour.
• Winter Survival Rate.
• Varroa Sensitive Hygiene (VSH) traits.
• Swarming Behaviour.

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.

Shipping & Delivery – Free overnight courier shipping on all products New Zealand wide, with Track and Trace.