At 01:22 PM 5/18/98 -0400, you wrote:
>off the subject is it common to get a shipment of bees all dead on arriveal
>and who pays for the losses? i was told it was the heat (does this seem right
>and is the post office to blame?? thanks Jerry
 
It is not common to have package bees or queens arrive DOA.
 
The shipper must guarantee "live delivery" or he is just ripping the public
off.
 
The way he does that is to insure them with the shipping agent, or if they
won't insure them he then assumes the risk and becomes self insured.
 
Now if you picked them up yourself at the beekeepers barn we insure them to
the edge of the black top because they were alive on delivery and you
assumed the "risk of transportation".
 
Contact your shipper, or the shipping agent at once so arrangements can be
made to replace your bees.
 
Some horror stories: I had a customer in Maine who wanted a load of package
bees. I went to the SF Airport and searched for a shipper who would take
package bees. I found a airline that never handled bees but really wanted
to do it. As none of the airlines had a direct flight so the bees would be
transferred at the airlines hub in Atlanta. Sounded good to me and they
were insured.
 
It took three shipments before any bees were delivered.<BG> So the bees got
there a little late but still early enough to satisfy the buyer and some
beekeeper in Atlanta got several hundred packages and I got three times the
business.
 
A old time friend of mine you was a Canadian beekeeper and also a
California package bee shippers told me of his first experience shipping
bees by air to Canada. A friend of his had a up and coming Air Fright
Company so they got together and made great plans to ship a full load to
Can dada. Everything went according to plan except after a few hours out
when he went in the back to check the bees which had been very quite and
stepped into a flood of sugar syrup leaking from the cans because of the
cabin pressure system which was forcing all the sugar out.
 
What a mess, but the bees made the trip with no loss, but the sugar found
its way into everything and actually after the plane was on the ground
could be seen leaking from the plane. It was necessary to do a "major"
clean up job on the plane and it was laid up for several days waiting
inspections.
 
A lesson was learned and walk in feed or dry feed was then used without
problem.
 
Of course since then Canada has closed their borders to US Bees to protect
US bees from exposure to bee diseases not known in the US or something like
that. They now have just about every bee disease, pest, and predator know
to man and the boarder remains closed.
 
I can just guess that is because they don't want to receive any cheep bees
from the US and its becoming a mute point as old time package beemen are no
longer that interested in shipping packages to Canada anyway. Maybe hives,
as then we could take advantage of our NAFTA partner and our good neighbors
great bee pasture and wonderful pollination. I am sure that US beekeepers
would be happy to supply a million or more hives each year to help out
northern bee friends.
 
ttul, the OLd Drone
http://beenet.com
BEENEWS and more.
 
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