Arcadia Bees
A frame of capped honey with bees, held up against the pines at our apiary

Late May through summer · when available

Queens, when we can spare one

$100 · pickup only

We're growing, so almost every queen we raise goes on to head a new colony of our own. We don't sell queens as a regular product yet. But if your hive goes queenless and you're in a bind, ask. When we have a laying queen to spare, she's yours.

How they're raised

Grafted from our breeder queens — colonies that overwintered on a single deep — raised in cell builders, then each cell goes into its own nuc to mate with local drones and start laying.

A queen leaves us only after she's laying a solid pattern. We don't sell virgins or cells.

A note on tradeoffs

Queens come unmarked by default; we'll mark one for $10 if you'd like her easier to find. Open mating means we can't promise pedigree — what we can promise is locally adapted stock with a known mother line. If you need an instrumentally inseminated or pedigreed queen, a larger breeding program is the better fit.

Need a queen?

Email us what's going on in the hive and where you are. If we have one laying, we'll set up a pickup.

Ask about a queen

Want queens on a regular basis?

We plan to sell queens once the operation is built out. Get on the list and we'll let you know.