Bee and Queen Sales

Locally bred bees are better adapted to the local conditions

Queens • Nucleus Colonies • Bee Packages • Full Queen-Right Hives

We believe that breeding local bees promotes stronger, healthier colonies that are better adapted to their unique environment. Being in a peri-urban area, we value having calm, healthy and strong bees that are well adapted to being around people and the unique challenges of urban and suburban landscapes.

Having a sustainable local breeding population is critical for achieving the diverse genetics needed to get the desirable traits and qualities needed for our local conditions. We believe this is required for calm, healthy and strong colonies capable of good honey production, improved pollination, and a stronger local bee population.

In addition we believe that local breeding is a more sustainable and sensible beekeeping practice than shipping bees across the country. For these reasons, we are dedicated to breeding and supplying the best quality locally bred bees and queens for our beekeeping community.

Unlike most wholesale breeders, our primary reason for breeding bees is to guarantee that our apiary has the highest quality bees available. Since we produce more queens and bees than we need, we make our surplus bees available for sale to local beekeepers. Every bee we produce is intended for our apiary and we do everything we can to make them best bees possible. We aim to supply better bees and believe you deserve the same quality of bees for your colonies as we want for ours.

As we are only breeding a small number of bees, we can focus more on each queen and hive. We assign a unique identifier to each each individual queen and colony so we can track their development to assure their quality. Every confirmed order is assigned to a tracked individual queen or colony. This allows us to give you specific information on your queen/colony, and enables you to get regular updates on its development and progress.

We only select our calmest, healthiest and best performing hives for breeding. All our queens are open mated and have our queen replacement warranty* so you can be confident that you will have a well bred, calm, high performing queen. To further ensure the quality and condition of our bees, we only offer local pickup and drop-off for our bees. This also means when you receive your bees you know they were not stressed or damaged during transportation.

We are committed to working with you and can customize your order to meet your specific needs. By supplying our bees locally we can continue to support you as you install your bees, establish your new colonies, manage your apiary and requeen your hives. Please don't hesitate to reach out to us to find out more or to order your bees today.

Call, text or email: (703) 895-3538 or WatersideCottageApiary@gmail.com

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Queens and Queen Cells

You can order queens and queen cells at anytime but the delivery date may depend on availability and the time of year. Once your order is confirmed, we will send you regular updates on the status of your queen.

Locally Bred Queens | seasonal & pre-order

All our queens are bred from our calmest, healthiest and best performing hives. They are all open mated and we verify that each queen is fully mated and laying properly before we sell them. Since they are bred from our best performing local stock, they are well adapted to local conditions. We offer a replacement warranty on our queens, but we cannot guarantee hive acceptance*. Queens can be marked or unmarked - as requested.

Queen Bee Cell | upon request

Although ordering a replacement queen is normally recommended, there are certain occasions when a replacement queen cell may be preferable. As with all our bees, our queen cells are from our calmest, healthiest and best performing hives and we do our best to ensure a high quality queen. We offer a replacement warranty on the viability of our queen cells, but we cannot guarantee hive acceptance or quality of the queen's mating and therefore laying abilities.*

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Although we cannot guarantee every queen will be accepted by your hive, we offer a Queen Replacement Warranty for any queen that fails to lay properly*. We also offer discounts for orders with multiple queens, repeat orders in the same season, and replacement queens when a queen is not accepted by the hive.

Nucleus Colonies

A nucleus bee colony, or "nuc," is a small, fully functioning bee colony with drawn frames, honey and pollen food stores, brood in all stages, a laying queen, and worker bees. Since a nuc is already a fully functioning unit, there's no need for the bees to acclimate to a new queen or build comb from scratch and the hive can build up into a full-sized colony much faster. Nucs are recommended for beginner beekeepers.

The worker bees and queens in our nucleus colonies are sisters coming from the same mother queen. The queen emerges in the colony and is never caged. This replicates the swarm and life cycle of bee colonies in nature and results in strong colonies with higher success rates than nucs and packages made with caged queens.

All our nucleus colonies are bred from our calmest, healthiest and best performing hives. We verify that all our queens are fully mated and laying properly before we will release them. This combined with our Queen Replacement Warranty* means you can be confident in your nuc purchase and its success in your apiary.

We can provide of 3, 4 or 5 frame nucs on deep or medium Langstroth frames on either of plastic foundation or as natural foundationless frames. We offer the option of returning or including the nuc box and also the option to swap out frames. Queens can be marked or unmarked - as requested.

Spring Nucs | available starting late April through the season

Depending on the season and weather, we normally begin our queen rearing activities and colony splits in March. This means our nucs are available for delivery/pick-up in time for the start of the May/June nectar flow. Based on our experience this schedule aligns well with the local swarm season and greatly improves the success rates of the new colony. Queen rearing too earlier in the season results in poorly mated queens, while installing new colonies late in the season means a weaker colony going into the fall as it misses the benefits of the peak nectar flow. You can order a spring nuc at anytime and once your order is confirmed, we will send you regular updates on your nuc's status as it develops.

Overwintered Nucs | availability is limited

Every year we keep and overwinter a limited number of nucs. In the spring we either use the overwintered nucs to establish new hives or make them available for sale. Overwintered nucs are generally available earlier than spring nucs, and since the colony is more established, tend to build up quicker. Unfortunately their availability is limited, however you can order an overwintered nuc anytime and we will do our best to make one available. Once your order is confirmed, we will send you information on your nuc's status and when it will be available. We will only release overwintered nucs once we have confirmed that the colony successfully survived the winter and that the queen is still laying an acceptable brood pattern.

Bee Packages

We only make bee packages on request. Availability may be limited and dependent on the time of year and season. You can order a bee package at anytime and once your order is confirmed, we will send you regular updates on the status of your package.

Package Bees | upon request

Although nucs are normally recommended for unestablished hives and new beekeepers, there are certain occasions when a bee package may be preferable. A bee package may be desirable when you want to replace or start a colony in a hive with drawn comb or when you want to start a new colony from scratch. You will also need a package if you are using other types of hives that you cannot get nucs for, such as Top Bar, Layens or Warre hives.

Most commercial bee packages are assembled by combining a newly mated queen with approximately 2-3 lbs. of unrelated bees from donor hives. This makes packages quick to make and easy to ship but there is a chance of the queen not being accepted and the colony failing. We will not ship our bees and unlike commercial bee packages, our packages come from a single hive with its laying queen. It is essentially a nucleus colony without the frames. We believe that using a single colony with an established and accepted queen mirrors a natural swarm and thereby greatly improves the likelihood of package success. Making packages this way is more resource intensive and takes more time but we feel this improves the chances of hive success and is worth the effort.

All our bees are bred from our calmest, healthiest and best performing hives. As with our nuc's, we verify that all our queens are fully mated and laying properly before we will release them . This combined with our Queen Replacement Warranty* means you can be confident in your package purchase will have its greatest chance of success in your apiary.

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Queen Right Hives

Queen right hives | special order

We can provide full queen right hives on request, however each queen right hive order is a custom order made to meet your unique requirements. You can order a fully functioning colony of bees in single box to get your hive up an running immediately, or we can configure and setup a complete hive with stands, bottom boards, covers, lids etc. to meet your specific need. Possible configurations include 8 and 10 frame Langstroth hives with deep or medium boxes.

Availability is dependent on the time of year and since these are custom special orders we require a slightly longer lead time for full hives than our nucs. Currently we only provide Langstroth Hives and not other hive types, such as Top Bar, Layens or Warre hives. We can also setup and/or manage your hive for you should you desire. See our Services Page for more information of the support services we can provide.

All our bees are bred from our best performing hives and we verify that all our queens are fully mated and laying properly before we will release them. This combined with our Queen Replacement Warranty* means you can be confident in your new beehive will have its greatest chance of success.

Transporting bees long distances can be stressful for the bees, potentially impacting their health and productivity. To maintain the quality and condition of our bees and to ensure they are not damaged or hurt during shipping, our bees, queens and queen cells are only available for local pickup or drop-off. We will not ship our bees.

*Queen Replacement Warranty

We are committed to providing only the highest quality bees and our Queen Replacement Warranty applies to all our queens, colonies and packages. We offer a replacement queen or full refund (to the value of a replacement queen) should the queen we supply fail to lay a consistent brood pattern within two weeks of installation. Our Queen Replacement Warranty excludes failure due poor handling or mishandling from the purchaser; queen acceptance failure by the accepting hive; failure of the purchaser to properly prepare the accepting hive; failure to install the new queen/bees in a timely manner; failure due to health issues or conditions in the accepting hive including poor hive location or placement, weak hives, laying workers, robbing, swarming, sickness, disease, or pests in the accepting hive; failure to properly care for the hive, including not adequately feeding during the dearth; not following recommended IPM practices; and/or colony death as a result of pesticides or poisoning.
We are committed to working with you to help ensure that our bees meet your expectations and become a viable hive and part of our local bee community.

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