Horizon tour to bee queens ,Buckfast , Carniolan and Carpatina.

The Essex Buckfast queens have been selected from breeding lines displaying good hygiene and honey production characteristics. The rearing of the Essex Buckfast has been developed with over 15 years of Bee farming and honey production knowledge. The Mother Queens pedigree and offspring, now representing the core stock in a significant Bee farming operation. Being UK mated they are locally acclimatised, and acceptance is very good.

The Buckfast bee is a honey bee a cross of many species of bees into a stable race developed by "Brother Adam", (born Karl Kehrle on 3 August 1898 in Germany), who was in charge of beekeeping at Buckfast Abbey, where the bees are still bred today.

In the early 20th century bee populations were being decimated by Isle of Wight disease. This condition, later called "acarine" disease, after the acarine parasitic mite that invaded the bees' tracheal tubes and shortened their lives, was killing off thousands of colonies in the British Isles in the early part of the 20th century.
The Buckfast bee is popular among beekeepers and is available from bee breeders in Germany, Ireland, the United Kingdom, France, and more. Most of the Buckfast bee's qualities are very favorable. They are extremely gentle and highly productive. Brother Adam, in his book, Beekeeping at Buckfast Abbey writes that in 1920 they obtained "an average of no less than 192 lbs surplus per colony and individual yields exceeding 3 cwt [approx. 336 lbs]." In the 1986 BBC-affiliated documentary, The Monk and the Honey Bee, more than 400 pounds of honey are reported to have been produced by a single Buckfast colony. According to Brother Adam, "The average annual honey yield over the last thirty years has been 30 kg (66 lb.) per colony. Thus we have a favourable balance compared with the average production in America or in Europe.