Mated Queens

We only ship queen cells next day Air UPS a box can hold up to 230 cells & we can tie two together which will ship 460 cells.They are shipped in cell protectors with bees to keep them warm or ventilated. Shipped only to your nearest UPS Customer service center arriving in the AM, cells emerge the day you get them so we will want to coordinate your splits, nucs etc with your delivery date.In the Lower 48 states it runs from $45 to $130. Double boxes are about 50% higher or around $195.00. 

WE HAVE QUEEN CELLS AVAILABLE FROM FEBRUARY TO OCTOBER and can be picked up at our Myakka City Florida location or we can ship them out safely using UPS overnight shipping.

Heritage Bee Farm home base is in Myakka City, Florida and has mated and queen cell production beginning in early February through October of each year (depending on weather factors).

Our Italian queens and Carniolan queens are shipped weekly via USPS Overnight Express and UPS Next Day Air. The cost to ship under 30 Queens usually runs $45.00. When you buy queen bees from Heritage Bee Farm, you will receive the USPS or UPS tracking information and updates on your order, from the time your queens are shipped, until the moment they arrive. Whatever your goals are – From Honey production to Pollination; it’s our honor to sell the finest quality Mated and Queen Cells available!

Mated Queens, Virgin Queens, and Queen cells are always in limited quantities based on the season. Please pre-order yours early so we can be sure to reserve your needs as soon as possible.

Florida Mated Queen Bees for Sale — Heritage Bee Farm

The single most important decision a beekeeper makes for the long term health, productivity, and temperament of any colony is the queen. Every trait that defines a great hive — the gentleness of the bees, the tightness of the brood pattern, the speed of spring buildup, the volume of honey produced, the colony's ability to resist disease and manage Varroa mites — flows directly from the genetics of the queen. At Heritage Bee Farm, a family-owned apiary operating in the heart of Myakka City, Florida, we have built our entire operation around producing mated queens of exceptional genetic quality, proven performance, and consistent excellence season after season. Whether you are requeening a single backyard hive or sourcing queens for a large commercial operation running hundreds or thousands of colonies, Heritage Bee Farm is your trusted Florida source for mated queens that deliver real, measurable results.

What Makes a Truly Great Mated Queen

Not every mated queen is created equal, and experienced beekeepers know that the difference between a mediocre queen and an exceptional one shows up quickly in the colonies she heads. A great mated queen lays prolifically and consistently, filling frames with tight, healthy brood patterns that leave virtually no empty cells. She builds her colony's population rapidly in spring, giving the hive maximum foraging power during peak nectar flows. She passes traits of disease resistance, mite tolerance, and gentle behavior to her worker daughters — traits that make the entire apiary easier and more rewarding to manage. She is vigorous, long-lived, and productive across multiple seasons of active laying.

At Heritage Bee Farm, producing queens that meet this standard begins long before any grafting takes place. Our breeder colony selection process is rigorous and ongoing. We evaluate colonies across full seasons, observing brood quality, population dynamics, honey storage behavior, mite load management, disease resistance, and temperament under real Florida beekeeping conditions. Only colonies that consistently excel across all of these criteria contribute genetics to our queen rearing program. This is not a shortcut process — it is a careful, deliberate investment in the quality of every queen that leaves our farm.

Italian and Carniolan Hygienic Stock — Genetics Selected for Florida

Heritage Bee Farm produces both Italian and Carniolan hygienic stock mated queens, giving beekeepers the ability to select genetics that align with their specific operation and management goals. Both lines share a foundation of hygienic behavior — a critically important trait in today's beekeeping environment where Varroa mite pressure is constant and disease management is an ongoing challenge.

Italian queens are an excellent choice for beekeepers focused on maximum honey production and strong year-round colony populations. Italian bees are prolific brood rearers, building large workforces that are capable of capitalizing on major nectar flows with impressive efficiency. Their gentle, predictable temperament makes them particularly well suited for hobbyists and for apiaries located near residential areas where calm manageable bees are a priority.

Carniolan queens bring a different but equally valuable set of strengths. Carniolan colonies are renowned for their explosive spring buildup — the ability to expand colony population rapidly when forage becomes available — and for their remarkable ability to regulate population size in response to seasonal forage conditions. This makes Carniolan stock exceptionally efficient, avoiding the feed consumption issues that can challenge Italian colonies during dearth periods. Their naturally dark coloration, calm demeanor, and outstanding Varroa mite tolerance make them a favorite among experienced beekeepers managing large operations.

Both lines are raised from stock that has been specifically evaluated and selected for performance under Florida's subtropical conditions — heat, humidity, year-round Varroa pressure, and the demands of both honey production and pollination season management. Our genetics are not simply imported stock repackaged for Florida beekeepers. They are lines that have been tested, observed, and refined in our own yards under the same conditions your colonies will face.

The Heritage Bee Farm Queen Rearing Process

Producing a truly excellent mated queen requires precision, patience, and deep knowledge of honey bee biology at every stage of development. Our queen rearing process reflects years of accumulated expertise and a commitment to doing every step correctly rather than quickly.

We graft larvae at less than twenty-four hours of age — the optimal window for producing queens that benefit fully from maximum royal jelly feeding by our cell builder colonies. Our cell builder colonies are strong, well-populated, and managed specifically to produce the highest quality queen cells possible. Once cells are capped and development is complete, virgin queens emerge and are given access to an abundant drone population for open mating flights under Florida's warm conditions. After mating is confirmed, queens are monitored for laying pattern quality and brood consistency before being made available to customers.

Every mated queen that leaves Heritage Bee Farm has been evaluated by experienced eyes. We do not ship or sell queens that do not meet our standard. The extra time and attention that goes into this evaluation process is what separates a Heritage Bee Farm mated queen from a queen that was simply produced and shipped without verification. When you install one of our queens you can do so with confidence that she has already demonstrated the quality we stake our reputation on.

Marked Queens Available — Know Your Queen at a Glance

For beekeepers who want the convenience of quick queen identification during hive inspections, Heritage Bee Farm offers queen marking upon request for a small additional fee per queen. Marked queens are painted with the internationally recognized color coding system that corresponds to the year of production, making it easy to confirm your queen's presence and track her age across seasons without the frustration of searching through thousands of bees on a busy frame.

Marking is particularly valuable for beekeepers managing multiple hives, commercial operations conducting regular inspections across large numbers of colonies, and newer beekeepers who are still developing the eye for spotting an unmarked queen efficiently. Simply request marking when placing your order and we will have your queens ready to go.

A Florida Production Season That Starts Earlier Than Almost Anyone

Heritage Bee Farm's location in Southwest Florida gives our customers an advantage that is difficult to overstate — a queen production season that begins in February and runs through October. For most queen producers across the United States, cold winter temperatures make early spring queen rearing impossible. Beekeepers in those markets wait until April or May for queens to become available, losing weeks of critical early season buildup time in the process.

Heritage Bee Farm customers do not face that limitation. Our early February availability means beekeepers can receive and install quality mated queens at the very start of the season, giving new colonies and requeened hives the maximum possible time to build up before the main nectar flows begin. For commercial beekeepers on pollination schedules, that early availability is not just a convenience — it is a genuine operational advantage that directly impacts the strength and readiness of colonies when they are needed most.

For beekeepers who need queens in the heart of summer when other producers have wound down production, our extended October season provides continued access to fresh mated queens through the later months — a window that few Florida producers and almost no out-of-state producers can match.

Mated Queens for Every Scale — From One Hive to Thousands

Heritage Bee Farm's mated queen program is built to serve the full range of beekeeping operations without compromising quality at any volume level. A hobbyist purchasing a single queen to replace a failing colony receives the same genetic stock and the same careful evaluation as a commercial operation ordering hundreds of queens for a large scale requeening program. At every volume level the standard remains the same — queens that are vigorous, well mated, proven laying, and ready to build exceptional colonies.

Our tiered volume pricing makes quality genetics accessible to beekeepers at every budget level while rewarding larger orders with meaningful savings. Small quantity orders serve hobbyists and backyard beekeepers who need just one or a few queens per season. Mid-range tiers are ideal for sideline operations managing several dozen hives. Larger volume tiers serve commercial beekeepers conducting wholesale requeening programs, managing pollination fleets, or building up colony counts ahead of major honey production seasons. For operations requiring queens in the hundreds or larger, we encourage direct contact to discuss production scheduling, custom pricing, and coordinated delivery or pickup arrangements.

Heritage Bee Farm has the production infrastructure and the seasonal capacity to fulfill significant volume orders reliably. We work with commercial operations across Florida and throughout the Southeast who depend on consistent access to quality genetics on a defined schedule, and we have built our production planning around the ability to meet those commitments season after season.

Requeening — The Most Impactful Management Decision You Can Make

For beekeepers managing established apiaries, regular requeening is one of the highest-return investments available in the entire management toolkit. A colony headed by a young, vigorous, high-quality queen consistently outperforms a colony running on an aging or genetically inferior queen in virtually every measurable category — population size, honey production, mite load management, disease resistance, and temperament. Many commercial beekeepers requeen annually or even twice per season specifically because the performance gains justify the cost many times over.

Heritage Bee Farm mated queens make requeening programs practical and financially sustainable at any scale. Our volume pricing ensures that the per-queen cost of a large requeening program remains manageable, and our extended Florida season gives you flexibility in timing your requeening to match your operation's schedule rather than being constrained by limited availability windows. If you have been putting off requeening because of cost, availability, or uncertainty about queen quality, Heritage Bee Farm is the partner that makes it easy to do it right.

Applications for Heritage Bee Farm Mated Queens

Heritage Bee Farm mated queens are used across a broad range of beekeeping applications including annual and biannual requeening programs, emergency requeening after unexpected queen loss, new colony establishment, nucleus colony production, swarm prevention through preemptive requeening, Africanized honey bee management and requeening programs across Florida and the Southeast, pollination colony preparation and buildup, overwintered colony requeening to restore vigor and productivity, hobbyist hive management, beekeeping club and association queen distribution programs, and educational apiary establishment. Whatever the need, Heritage Bee Farm mated queens deliver the genetic foundation that gives every colony its best possible chance at long term success.

Order Your Heritage Bee Farm Mated Queens

Queen availability is seasonal and production slots fill on a first come first served basis. We strongly encourage beekeepers to reserve their queens as early in the year as possible — particularly for spring orders which are consistently our most requested and which fill well ahead of the season opening. Large commercial orders require advance production planning and should be discussed with our team as early as possible to ensure your requirements can be accommodated within our production schedule.

Queens are marked upon request for a small additional fee. For orders requiring custom bulk pricing or quantities that fall outside our standard tiers, please contact us directly to discuss your needs and arrange your reservation.

Reach us by phone at 833-BEE-FARM (833-233-3276) or by using our Contact Form. Heritage Bee Farm — a Florida family apiary raising mated queens of genuine quality, for beekeepers who understand that everything in the hive starts with the queen.