The following is a comment I wrote a fellow some
time ago on the "sci.agriculture.beekeeping" newsgroup:
 
> Buckfast from Weaver Apiaries.  Has anyone had
>any experience with these queens?
 
Kevin,
   I have used the Weaver's Buckfast queen for the last four
years and have [overall] been pretty happy with their perfor-
mance.  I've made a trip down to Navasota (I live in Dallas)
to pickup my queens.  So I've seen their operation.  I've also
been to England (to Buckfast Abbey) and have met Brother
Adam.  I don't claim to be an expert on the Buckfast queens
but I'll offer my observations.
   The Weavers offer for sale a "Texas" version of the Buck-
fast queens.  Meaning that their queens are naturally bread.
The only queens that are direct stock from Buckfast are their
own breeder queens.  Now of course they claim (and probably
so) that by saturating an area with Buckfast drones and raising
Buckfast virgin queens, that you're getting a "Buckfast" queen.
This is a common breeding pratice.  However I know that they
also raise a strain of Itilian bees also in the same area.  Also,
I am not familiar with how often they replenish their gene pool
with imported Buckfast semen.
   I have read and belive it is beneficial to not always buy your
queens from the same supplier (year in & year out).  And while
I like the Buckfast, you may have noticed a posting from me
looking for a Canadian supplier of Buckfast. The Weavers are
 the only US supplier.  I believe that to maintain a vigorous strain
of Buckfast bees, it is now time for me to purchase the Buckfast
line from a different breeder.
   The only complaint that I've heard from people who have bought
the Weaver's Buckfast queens, is that its very hard to get a colony
of bees to accept their queens.  And I have lost a Buckfast queen
myself by trying to introduce her to a "full strength" colony.  I
would recommend that you only use their Buckfast queens to start
off a new colony (as in a split, like you talked about).  If you use a
Nuc box and have a couple of frames of brood and a couple of
frames of honey (& maybe even feed them some sugar syrup)
then you should be able to put a Buckfast queen in and have the
bees accept her.  I've even left the cork in the queen cage for two
or three days while the Nuc bees get use to her scent.  And then
pulled out the cork and let the bees eat out the candy plug over
the next three or four days.  This technique extended the time that
she is protected from the hive bees (and it seemed to help).
Good luck,
 
BusyKnight
Dallas, TX
 
 
 
 
BusyKnight
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