Steves Bees

Steves Bees 40 Years of family run Beekeping
Covering Littlehampton and surrounding areas since 1986!

Beautiful tasting local honey and beeswax products, Learn about beekeeping, bee loving plants, delicious honey inspired recipes....

09/06/2026

Going through one of the hives this evening. Had to end this inspection early as the weather turned stormy and the bees went on the defence. Going to need some steps for those supers soon!



We are having some technical difficulties with our whattapp messaging through posts. If your trying to contact us and we...
06/06/2026

We are having some technical difficulties with our whattapp messaging through posts. If your trying to contact us and we are not responding. Please try the whattapp button at the top of the page alternatively use the messenger button.

We just have 227g Jars left £5.50

A taste from then new Apiary.Spring honey has now been jarred and is ready for all you honey lovers.This Year marks 40 y...
05/06/2026

A taste from then new Apiary.
Spring honey has now been jarred and is ready for all you honey lovers.
This Year marks 40 years of beekeeping in our family so for this special milestone we have changed the labels, these ones really show off the quality of this pure local honey.

227g - £5.50
454g - £8.50 ~sold out~

The easiest way to get yours is via the WhatsApp button at the top of the page, if there is no response please use the message button.

30/05/2026

Last week was a hot one. Here a quick update from the out apairy.



Its nearly spring harvest we are just waiting on a few supers to finish off being capped. Heres an example of a beautifu...
17/05/2026

Its nearly spring harvest we are just waiting on a few supers to finish off being capped. Heres an example of a beautiful capped frame of honey.

All the new queens are emerging in the hives. When they are ready to emerge, it was 12-13 days in this case. They will c...
17/05/2026

All the new queens are emerging in the hives. When they are ready to emerge, it was 12-13 days in this case. They will chew through the bottom of the cell and emerge its like a little hinged door. The queen will now spend a few days in the hive maturing before going on her mating flight.

When the hive decides that a new queen is needed they will select a cell with a 1-3 day old egg/larvae in and then feed it with a high nutrient rich diet of Royal Jelly. This goes on for around 9 days as they continue to build the cell and close it off.

After this, the larvae starts to pupates and develop into a virgin queen and normally at around day 16 she will emerge. But in ourcase they have done this quicker.

The who process can take up to around 24 days.

After she's mated she will spend a couple of days developing before laying eggs.

Its good practice even in small scale beekeping to have a hive set up which is purely for raising new queens, as if you have queens on hand then you can split and introduce a new queen straight away. As if you leave a hive queenless for over 20 days thats 20 days without any new bees being produce so the hive would dwindled slightly and you would notice the difference in honey stores.

05/05/2026

Sit back and watch the mesmerising sight of bees going to and from the hive in slow motion.



We had a nice suprise earlier i needed to use a couple of the slabs which i keep in front of the hives to put on top of ...
04/05/2026

We had a nice suprise earlier i needed to use a couple of the slabs which i keep in front of the hives to put on top of the nucs to weigh down, under two of the slabs there were slow worms! Two big ones and a baby. I carefully lowered the slabs back down. What a great find! We also had one on our lawn at home earlier too. These elusive reptiles are always great to see.

04/05/2026

A little video update on splitting of the big combine.
An early start at 7am up to the apiary.

I could have easily made up a further 6 to 8 colonies. As it stands, before this method there were 9 colonies and now there is 19 but this will be further reduced once the splits are combine with the original hives.
Next thing is to get them re-queen asap!

To save space and equipment the splits were put onto the hives seperate by a crown board and a open mesh floor.
This is a trial and a take on Viktors recycling method, my main focus was to get all hives with equal numbers of bees and requeened with a reliable queen, so i have all strong colonies.

We then went onto the other apairy to get the nearly hatched queen cells into the apedias. We did have a surprise at the first apairy when i went to move two of the slabs that i had put in front of the hives check out my next post!



fans

This evening we gave this young man an introduction to beekeping, he just about squeezed into my old bee suit. And i eve...
03/05/2026

This evening we gave this young man an introduction to beekeping, he just about squeezed into my old bee suit. And i even managed to get Abby in a suit shes always happy to help out with the honey extraction side of things but its another thing to get her suited and up close with the bees.

They both helped move the mini mating nucs into position and open them up. We opened up the standard nucs where they spotted the queen and saw the eggs that the queen had been laying.

We moved onto the nationals where we added fresh supers and i showed them how busy a main hive was. They both enjoyed the visit a well worth trip.

Address

Littlehampton

Opening Hours

Monday 7am - 9:30pm
Tuesday 7am - 9:30pm
Wednesday 7am - 9:30pm
Thursday 7am - 9:30pm
Friday 7am - 8pm
Saturday 8am - 8pm
Sunday 9am - 4pm

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