Busy Bees Nurseries - Busy Bees at Bicester Kingsmere Reviews 

We started in January 2025, and pulling our son out in July 2025.

Jude has now learnt “Oh Shit” and “ Oh Fu**” since being in the pre-school room and insists this has been learnt from another child. A frustrating issue is at pick up we’re always told he’s had a good day and everything is fine, but when I mentioned the foul language he’s learnt I was then informed that they are having issues with bad language in his room and it’s being dealt with it by encouraging ‘kind words’, but we’d previously not been informed this could be the case.

The new doorbell system, I have to wait 8-10 minutes for someone to come to the door, along with a handful of other parents.

When picking up I’ve walked up the stairs to pre-school and could see the children in the garden. I watched my own child repeatedly kick a little girl while all the staff in the garden just looked around, not watching, no one engaging with the children.
I’ve also seen this when I stood at the front door, carers just sat looking around in the toddler garden, staring at the sky, disengaged, nobody engaging with the children.

Since Jude’s joined his behaviour at home has deteriorated and I do feel this is due to the lack of discipline and high staff turnover at Busy Bees.


I hope over time you manage to get things back on track.

My family and I had a terrible experience when collecting my child. Firstly we didn’t have the agreed settling in days due to lack of staff. When i dropped her off on her first day i asked whether i could come in with her since she hadn't had a settling in day. Staff said no and grabbed her from me. I called a few times to check in on her and they said she was fine, although later told me that she had thrown up. I asked for a picture where i saw tears in my childs eyes and decided to pick her up early. She was in such a bad way, shaking due to nonstop crying, even though i called the nursery who advised she was fine. She had vomit in her hair her clothes and something white that was all over her face and top. This was my first experience as shes my first child not even two yet. Due to this service I’ve now decided that this terrible experience has put me off putting my child in any nursery and i wont go back to work until she ready to go to state nursery. On a separate note i observed during one of my visits that children run in and outside with shoes on in the same areas that they sleep. Every child basically has a runny nose and I’m guessing thats due to the policy that even if your child is unwell you have to pay, therefore leaving parents to bring in sick children. When i spoke to the manager at the hub, she didn’t call to say sorry your leaving or is there anything we could do. She just called to basically tell me that I will have to pay for a further month since leave is 1 months noticed. Overall i dont trust that this busy bee nor the staff would look after my child, i asked one of the staff when first visiting why are all the children crying and she advised its due to the door opening and the children thinking their parent is coming through. Now i know thats not true, children are always crying because they are not given the attention they require.

I would give five stars if this review was only about the staff, they are the angels on earth! However, there are things in the centre operations that need to change : shoes from outside should not be allowed inside the children rooms, this should be a basic rule, mostly after we went through a pandemic, and I hope will change soon!
The fact that we need to pay full rate when the kids are unwell or on holidays it blows my mind… I understand we need to keep the space but the kid is not there! They should introduced a reduced fee to pay when the kids are not going.
The menu offered is generally good, and again, the staff is brilliant, lovely with the kids and very helpful during settling.