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 [log in to unmask] ICBM INcode:N:32.45'W:96.45' Republic of Texas G.E. - We Bring Good Things to Life And a leading manufacturer of Thermonuclear Bombs. Life, we make it Glow in the Dark!