Dearest gentle readers, the social season is fully underway in the apiary, and a new group of ladies has officially arrived at the estate. Fresh from Mann Lake, these Buckfast bees have already caused quite the stir among the local residents with their pleasant temperaments, lighter coloring, and suspiciously charming behavior.
Thankfully, unlike Bridgerton, the only drama in our bee yard so far has involved a smoker that wouldn’t stay lit and someone forgetting where they set the hive tool down for the fifteenth time.
May Activities
As May progresses, we are feeding our little colonies due to the cold and wet weather. But they are all very happy still. We are also keeping a close eye to make sure no one swarms!
Got a swarm? Call us!
This weekend (May 9th), we will travel up to Lucinda, PA. After lunch with our Aunt, we'll stop and pickup a couple nucs from Steve. We met Steve at a festival at one of the local farms in Clarion. Steve's Bees Honey can be found all over Clarion County. It also just happens that he is a distant cousin of mine!
Apimaye Insulated Hive
There’s a new resident in our apiary this season: an Apimaye insulated hive system. We recently picked up one of their 10-frame hive sets and decided it was too interesting not to put through a real-world test. Most of us are used to the classic wooden Langstroth setup: pine boxes, propolis-glued lids, warped covers after a few wet Pennsylvania seasons, and the annual game of “how much ventilation is enough but not too much?” The Apimaye hives take a very different approach. These hives are built from insulated, double-walled food-grade plastic with built-in ventilation controls, feeders, entrance reducers, and locking components all integrated into the design.
What really caught our attention was the focus on temperature stability and moisture control. Traditional wooden hives do a decent job, but bees spend an enormous amount of energy heating and cooling the colony through the seasons. Apimaye’s insulated design aims to reduce that workload so colonies can conserve resources during winter and build up faster in spring. The system is still compatible with standard 10-frame Langstroth equipment, which means we can experiment without rebuilding our entire operation around proprietary gear. We can even stack wooden honey supers on top during the summer months.
Over the coming months, we’ll be treating this hive like a little bee-side science project. We want to compare brood development, honey stores, overwintering success, moisture levels, and overall colony temperament against our more traditional wooden setups. Will the insulation help the bees thrive during our unpredictable Pennsylvania weather swings? Will ventilation management actually be easier, or just more complicated with extra moving parts? And perhaps most importantly: will the bees seem happier working inside what looks suspiciously like the luxury cabin version of a hive? 🐝
At the very least, the Apimaye setup already wins points for thoughtful engineering. Everything snaps together with a satisfying “this was designed by someone who actually keeps bees” kind of feel. Whether it becomes our future standard or just an interesting experiment remains to be seen, but that’s half the fun of beekeeping anyway. Every hive teaches you something new.
April Activities
So why Buckfasts? These bees were originally developed by combining different honey bee lines to create a calmer, hardier hybrid with improved disease resistance and productivity. One of the first things we noticed after installing them was how relaxed they were. Chris even commented that “the ladies are happy,” which, in beekeeper language, is basically a five-star review.
From everything I’ve read, Buckfast bees are known for being excellent foragers, even during cooler or cloudy weather when other colonies might stay home and complain about the forecast. They also have a reputation for strong honey production while being conservative with their winter stores, which feels like a pretty good combination for Pennsylvania beekeeping. Between their temperament, resilience, and work ethic, they seemed like a great colony to experiment with this season.
Of course, our Saskatraz girls are still out there doing their thing too, and we’ve been really happy with them. If anything, adding Buckfast genetics into the apiary should make for an interesting comparison and maybe even strengthen the overall diversity of our colonies moving forward.
Here’s a video from right after the install:
Fun Activity
What kind of bees are you seeing around your place? Check out what Healthy Recipes posted in July 2025. Chris found this picture the other day and it really is a nice overview of some of the types of bees out there. There you can see how the Buckfast Bee compares to others.
Buckfast Bees - ChatGPT Opinion
Buckfast bee are kind of the “Swiss Army knife” of the beekeeping world 🐝⚙️
They were developed in the early 1900s by a monk named Brother Adam at Buckfast Abbey after disease wiped out much of the local bee population. He spent decades selectively breeding bees from all over Europe and the Middle East to create a colony that was productive, gentle, and hardy.
Buckfast bees are known for:
- Calm temperament. Many beekeepers say they’re easier to work without turning the hive into a tiny airborne riot.
- Strong honey production. They build up fast in spring and forage aggressively.
- Lower swarming tendency compared to some other strains.
- Good overwintering ability when properly managed.
- Excellent hygienic behavior, which can help with disease resistance.
A few tradeoffs:
- Because they’re hybrids, queens may not “breed true” if they mate naturally. A second-generation Buckfast colony can behave very differently from the original line.
- Some lines can become a bit too prolific, meaning you need to stay ahead on space management.
- Availability and quality vary a lot depending on the breeder.
Compared to Italian honey bee:
- Buckfasts are often calmer and more conservative with winter stores.
- Italians are usually easier to source and can explode with brood production.
Compared to Carniolan honey bee:
- Buckfasts tend to swarm less.
- Carniolans often winter in smaller clusters and handle cold very efficiently.
For western Pennsylvania winters, a well-bred Buckfast line can do quite well if you keep mites under control and make sure they enter winter heavy enough. Around your area, a lot of beekeepers end up liking them because they’re productive without feeling like every hive inspection is a medieval siege.
(AI Generated Buckfast Bee fact list)
