Estonia’s beekeepers are combining old rural traditions with modern genetics, raising queen bees that could help hives survive harsh northern winters and thrive in a changing climate.

In Estonia, where ancient forests give way to bogs, meadows and small farms, beekeeping has long been part of rural life. The country’s northern climate is not an easy one for bees: the winters are long, the summers brief and the main nectar season passes quickly. Yet Estonia is home to thousands of beekeepers, from countryside hobbyists tending a few hives to professional apiaries managing colonies on a commercial scale.

At the centre of this world is a practice of growing importance: queen bee rearing – mesilasemade kasvatamine. Once the concern of specialist breeders, it has become one of the foundations of modern Estonian apiculture, shaping not only the productivity of hives but also the resilience of colonies in a demanding northern environment.

A small sector with growing ambitions

The western honey bee (Apis mellifera) is the most common species kept in Estonia. These bees have adapted to a climate defined by cold winters and a short but intense warm season, when colonies must build strength, forage efficiently and store enough resources for the months ahead.

Such conditions test bees and beekeepers alike. Even so, beekeeping remains widespread across the country, with most apiaries still operating on a small scale.

Beekeepers tend hives in Estonia, where the craft of apiculture blends old rural knowledge with modern queen bee breeding and genetic selection. Photo by Renee Altrov.

More recent figures suggest that Estonia’s beekeeping sector is both widespread and fragmented. In 2024, 1,932 beekeepers applied to PRIA, Estonia’s Agricultural Registers and Information Board, for bee colony support, covering 35,531 bee colonies. The year before, PRIA received a record 2,070 applications covering 39,820 colonies. These figures do not capture every household producing honey, but they offer a useful snapshot of the registered and support-seeking part of the sector.

The regional pattern has also evolved. In 2023, the largest number of bee colonies for which support was sought was in Lääne-Viru County, followed by Tartu County and Pärnu County.

The broader national figures point to steady growth. According to Statistics Estonia, the country’s official statistics agency, the number of bee colonies in the country rose from about 39,000 in 2013 to nearly 55,000 in 2023, while honey production increased from 979 tonnes to around 1,600 tonnes over the same period. The figures suggest a sector that has expanded considerably over the past decade, even as production remains highly dependent on weather, flowering conditions and the health of bee colonies.

The hidden genetics of Estonia’s hives

Rather than simply producing more honey, Estonia’s beekeepers are increasingly focused on quality, resilience and stronger breeding stock. Domestic honey still accounts for most honey consumed in Estonia, but imports continue to supplement the market – making reliable yields, local quality and genetic resilience important priorities for the sector.

A beekeeper inspects a honeycomb frame. In Estonia, careful hive management and queen bee selection are helping beekeepers build stronger, more resilient colonies. Photo by Bianca Ackermann on Unsplash.

Beneath the hum of Estonia’s hives lies a hidden genetic story. A study published in Insectes Sociaux by Springer Nature in 2026 found that Estonia’s honey bee population is made up largely of commercial C-lineage honey bees – chiefly Apis mellifera ligustica, the Italian bee, and Apis mellifera carnica, the Carniolan bee. These lineages were most likely brought north from southern Europe over decades of trade, leaving their genetic signature in apiaries across the country.

The researchers identified 11 distinct mitochondrial DNA haplotypes, arranged into three clusters. Yet one bee was largely missing from the picture: Apis mellifera mellifera, the dark northern European honey bee that once ranged widely across the region. Now rare in Estonia, this native subspecies may still hold genes valuable for survival in cold, northern conditions. Its scarcity points to a wider tension in modern beekeeping: the drive for productive commercial stock on one hand and the need to conserve local genetic resilience on the other.

How to raise a queen

This is where queen bee rearing becomes more than a technical craft. The queen is the reproductive heart of the colony. Her genes ripple through the hive, shaping the health, temperament and productivity of tens of thousands of bees.

Without a strong queen, even the busiest colony can falter; with a well-selected one, it has a far better chance of surviving the winter, expanding in spring and making full use of Estonia’s short season of bloom.

Bees in an Estonian meadow. The country’s short northern summer gives colonies only a brief window to gather nectar and build the stores they need for winter. Photo courtesy of the Estonian Beekeepers’ Union.

The process of queen rearing involves several carefully managed stages:

• The making of a queen begins with selection. Beekeepers choose only the strongest queen mothers for reproduction, looking for traits that may determine the fate of future colonies: resistance to disease, calm behaviour, the ability to survive long winters and a high capacity for honey production.
• From these selected colonies, very young larvae are carefully moved into artificial wax cells – or plastic cups in modern systems – in a process known as larval grafting. Here, their destiny changes. Genetically, they are no different from worker bees. What transforms them is food: queen larvae are fed royal jelly throughout their development, setting them on a different biological path.
• The queen cells are then incubated under carefully controlled conditions until the virgin queens emerge. Newly hatched queens are placed in small mating nuclei – miniature hives where they mature before taking to the air on their nuptial flights. High above the landscape, they mate with drones from the surrounding area, carrying back to the hive the genetic future of the colony.

From southern Estonia to Europe’s apiaries

In southern Estonia, where forests, fields and wildflower meadows provide rich forage through the brief northern summer, one of the country’s best-known queen bee breeders has built its reputation. Tull Honey Company traces its roots to 1984, when Jaanus Tull began tending his first bee colonies. Today, the family-run company manages more than 1,700 colonies, combining honey production with the careful selection of stronger breeding stock.

The company specialises in Italian queen bees (Apis mellifera ligustica), marketed under the brand name “Nordic Gold Italian Queen”. Prized for their gentle temperament and productivity, these queens are shipped across Europe, carrying Estonian-bred genetics far beyond the apiaries where they were raised.

Jaanus Tull, the founder of Tull Honey Company, holding a frame from one of his bee colonies in southern Estonia. Photo courtesy of Tull Honey Company.

At Tull Honey Company, the honey harvest is also a test of breeding. Each hive shows how a queen’s traits perform in real conditions: how strongly the colony builds, how calmly its workers behave and how efficiently it gathers nectar. In this cycle, the honey jar becomes more than a product – it is evidence of breeding, climate and the quiet precision of the hive.

The queen at the heart of the hive

Inside every thriving bee colony is a single animal on which the fate of tens of thousands depends. The queen bee does not command the hive in any human sense, but her genetic legacy runs through it: in the colony’s temperament, resistance to disease, tendency to swarm and ability to make use of the short northern season.

For beekeepers, a good queen can mean the difference between a colony that builds calmly and productively and one that struggles to survive. Colonies headed by carefully selected queens are often easier to handle, more productive and better able to withstand diseases and parasites, including Varroa mites – among the most serious threats to beekeeping worldwide.

Beekeepers tend hives in Estonia, where the craft of apiculture blends old rural knowledge with modern queen bee breeding and genetic selection. Photo by Renee Altrov.

In Estonia, these qualities are not luxuries. They are survival traits. Long, cold winters test every colony, while spring demands a rapid recovery as soon as the first nectar sources appear.

The Carniolan and Italian genetics now common in Estonian apiaries reflect this balancing act: Carniolan bees are valued for conserving resources in winter and building up quickly in spring, while Italian bees are prized for gentleness and honey production. Together, they speak to the practical art of Estonian beekeeping: choosing bees that can endure the north, yet make full use of its brief abundance.

More than honey

Bees also occupy a place in Estonian culture that reaches beyond honey and genetics. A multi-country study published in the Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine in 2025, covering beekeepers in Estonia, Ukraine and Italy, found that apitherapy – the medicinal use of bee products – remains a living tradition among Estonian beekeepers.

In Estonia, this includes the use of products such as dead bee tinctures, drone brood homogenates and honeycomb moth larva tinctures – practices not found among Italian beekeepers in the study and suggestive of a distinctly northern European folk tradition.

Honey drips into a jar. Estonia’s beekeepers are increasingly focused on quality, resilience and stronger colonies, with queen bee breeding playing a growing role in the country’s apiculture. Photo by Benyamin Bohlouli on Unsplash.

Estonian beekeeping still rests on patience, weather sense and close knowledge of the land. Across the countryside, hobby beekeepers tend hives beside forests, meadows and farmsteads, while professional breeders such as Tull Honey Company send carefully selected queen bees far beyond Estonia’s borders.

Increasingly, the focus is turning to the queen. The growing practice of queen bee rearing – mesilasemade kasvatamine – reflects a simple but decisive idea: stronger, healthier and more resilient colonies begin in the hidden life of the hive.