Fit for a Princess (and Actual Beekeepers): The PollenMaid Bee Suit Review

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The PollenMaid Bee Suit

There are very few occasions where I feel like a prince when I’m beekeeping.

Sweaty. Swollen. Smelling like woodsmoke and propolis. It’s hardly the vibe of royalty. But then I stumbled across the PollenMaid Bee Suit and suddenly, I got it. Why Kate Middleton donned one on World Bee Day and looked like she was off to tea at Highgrove rather than into a hive full of angry bees.

It turns out… she may be onto something.

Princess Kate Middleton in Beesuit
Royalty and reality – the PollenMaid in action

Designed for women, not just ‘also worn by’

For years, women beekeepers have been fumbling around in kit made for their taller, broader, longer-limbed beekeeping brethren. The result? Baggy sleeves. Bunched-up waists. A crotch somewhere around the knees. Enter: B J Sherriff’s PollenMaid.

A suit actually designed for women’s proportions. They’ve added shaping where it’s needed, shortened what always got in the way, and crucially – made the waist and chest area actually work for female anatomy.

Wearing a suit that fits makes you feel less like a beekeeper impersonator and more like you know what you’re doing. That confidence actually helps when you’re mid-inspection and the bees are testing your nerve.

The details that matter

Some suits just have that ‘we added pink so now it’s for women’ vibe. This isn’t that.

Engineered for comfort, fit, and practicality, the PollenMaid is the first-ever bee suit designed with women in mind. Its patent-pending drop-down back panel allows for quick, discreet comfort breaks—without removing the suit. Simply unzip, unbuckle, release—and refasten just as swiftly.

The PollenMaid features also include:

  • Tailored fit with elegant, patterned trim
  • Self-supporting hood for easy wear and storage
  • Sherriff’s ClearView Veil for superior visibility
  • See-through phone pocket for convenient use on the go

Bonus: Every PollenMaid suit arrives in a FREE BJ Sherriff signature storage bag.

Is it worth the royal seal of approval?

Well, if it’s good enough for Kate… In her World Bee Day photo, she’s spotted in a near-identical bee suit – sparking a flurry of interest in women’s beekeeping wear. Granted, she didn’t have a smoker in one hand and a half-glued super in the other, but she looked the part.

And let’s not underestimate what a difference it makes to see high-profile women showing interest in bees, biology, and bonnets. Visibility counts – even if it’s via a very clean pair of gauntlets.

Final thoughts: Buzzing about it

Would I recommend the PollenMaid? Yes. Wholeheartedly.

It’s not cheap – it’s a premium suit and comes in at £345 (at time of writing) – but after years of making do, it feels like a bit of kit that actually respects female beekeepers. You will feel comfortable, protected, and, dare I say it… a little bit glam.

Just don’t expect the bees to treat you like a princess. No one’s told them about World Bee Day.

The Colours of Beekeeping

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The Colours of Beekeeping…

Beekeeping suits and work wear apparel from BJ Sherriff are available in a spectrum of bee-friendly colours.

So why the colours?

Here’s our explanation of why Sherriff use the following bee friendly colours in their range and how they came about after testing on their South Cornwall Honey Farm and by many eager professional beekeepers who were happy to test the bee outfits around the globe on our behalf.

Let’s think about the White fabric.

A traditional colour fabric, easy to get hold of so when BJ Sherriff started manufacturing beekeeping wear it was the natural choice and still the go to colour for beekeepers working in hot climates. The British Beekeepers Association members were some of our first customers since the start of our business and even more so today. We named our white Bee Farmer vest and ClearView bee veil after the Bee Farmer’s Association who wanted a bee veil which was light and airy and could be unzipped to throw-back on to the shoulders for driving from apiary to apiary without having to disrobe. This garment twinned well with their existing beekeeping boiler suits.

Our range of white bee wear consists of the Apiarist, Honey Rustler, Handy Hood, Bee Farmer, over-trousers, Junior Apiarist, BeePro lined bee suit and lined bee jacket for those sensitive to stings and No-Sting double thickness gauntlets are available in White.

Sherriff’s Khaki fabric:

The Khaki fabric is dyed especially for BJ Sherriff and came about when apiarists in New Zealand were having problems when preparing bee hives for pollination at night. When the moon shone brightly on their white bee suits the honeybees were attracted to the white cloth and they were getting stung! In the early 70’s a large beekeeping company asked Brian and Pat Sherriff if they could come up with a solution and so the khaki bee suit was born!

The brighter colours:

Candy floss Pink –Why pink? – well, why not?! Years ago, we would never have thought of introducing a bee suit in pink! However, with so much interest in beekeeping from every walk of life, from young and old and those in between, we wanted to move with the times so Sherriff have been making pink bee suits for nearly thirty years would you believe and after all beekeeping shouldn’t be dull!

Check out all our bee-friendly coloursat www.bjsherriff.com

To be continued….