It all started with a 'blue' black bee!
'Bluey' arrived in 2025. She came from my mentor in our local beekeeping association and was part of a native black bee breeding programme. The blue spot that gives her her name denotes the year she was born - and helps us find her amongst 40-60,000 worker bees!
In her first year, Bluey had one job: to build a colony strong enough to survive the winter. That was it. No honey harvest, no swarming and no breeding.
Winter 2025/26 was a tough one for bees, with prolonged cold and seemingly endless wet weather. Many beekeepers reported high colony losses, but Bluey and her colony came through strongly - drawing on the traits shaped by thousands of years of evolution and local adaptation.
A little too strongly, perhaps - I did have to retrieve her after she swarmed into our neighbour's garden!
Bluey went on to produce five daughter colonies in 2026. Some remain here with us, while others have gone on to establish new colonies around North Wales - taking Bluey's genetics with them.
What is a native black bee? Aren't all bees native?
The native dark honey bee, Apis mellifera mellifera, is the honey bee native to Britain and much of northern Europe. Dark in colour and adapted over generations to its local environment, it is part of our natural beekeeping heritage.
Over time, imported honey bees and queens have been brought over from other European subspecies and strains. As honey bee queens mate with drones (male bees) in flight, those genetics don't stay neatly within individual apiaries - they can spread through the wider local bee population.
For us, conserving native bees isn't simply about how a bee looks. It's about protecting genetic diversity and locally adapted characteristics, and breeding from healthy native stock that is well suited to life here in North Wales
That's why Bluey's story matters. Every daughter colony represents another opportunity to maintain those native genetics - and, through their queens and drones, to contribute them to future generations of bees.