Back in the mid 1980’s I was hired by a Canadian beekeeping equipment supplier to escort package bees from Los Angeles, north to Canada. The outfit I worked for had discovered that packages would arrive in much better shape if they had an advocate along to watch out for them – especially if they were not flying on a direct, non-stop flight.
 
The packages were flown from New Zealand to LA in the belly of an Air New Zealand passenger plane  – usually arriving in the afternoon. Once in LA, the pallet of bees would be unloaded and reformatted from a U shape (built to fit in the belly of a plane), to an inverse U shape (built to conform with the ceiling of a plane). The reformatting was done with the help of a couple of kids, inside a walk in cooler. The following morning the pallet was loaded at the front of an Air Canada DC 8 cargo plane for the flight to Toronto. 

I expect things have changed now, but back then a member of the public could ride in the cockpit of a cargo plane with the crew. At that time, Canadians could travel to the US without a passport and I didn't have one. My employer vouched for my good character and I was given clearance. 

During the flight I would periodically walk back to the cargo hold to check the thermometer on the outside of the packages, to make sure they were ok. The pilots would happily adjust the temperature of the cargo hold if asked. I can’t remember what the preferred temperature was now – cool enough to keep the bees clustered.

The crew of three flying these planes were always welcoming and friendly. They would give me a headset so I could listen to their conversations with the control towers. I noticed things always seemed a little tense flying out of LAX as it is such a busy place. 

The flight from LA would land in Toronto, but some loads would then go on to Montreal or Halifax. The layover in Toronto could be several hours so the bees were unloaded. I would proceed to the Air Canada cargo office to pick up an identity card  that allowed me to return to the cargo terminal to monitor the bees. This would only take ten minutes or so, but I learned that was long enough for the pallet of bees to get lost.

If you just walked off the plane without speaking to anyone and then returned to ask the cargo supervisor where the bees were, they’d say, “Bees? What bees? We never saw any bees.” Then they’d spend a half hour or more trying to get a computer to tell them where the pallet of bees had been stashed.
 
The way to avoid this was to buttonhole a competent looking forklift operator as you left the plane and ask for their help. He/she would then keep track of the pallet and seek you out to tell you where it was on your return.

These shipments occurred in April so the days could get hot. If need be I’d ask the forklift operator to move the bees into a cooler. This was a nuisance though as the coolers in Toronto were about twenty feet in the air.
  
If left to the cargo crews, most pallets of bees would be stored out on the tarmac. They might place them in the shade of a building to begin with, but then forget about them. And the earth doesn’t stop spinning, even for Toronto, although I don't think the supervisors know that.
 
One final side note from this experience - the shipper would encase the pallet in a bee-tight cargo net before it left New Zealand. Given the packrat gene present in most beekeepers, this cargo net never failed to attract interest. 

My employer would tell me who had been promised the net from each load, but if the chosen candidate showed up late at the airport, some other beekeeper would usually lay claim to it.

I too coveted these nets. On one occasion I managed to remove the net and hide it before any beekeepers arrived. Halifax I think it was. But to no avail. “What happened to the net?” “Who got the net?” “Where is the net?” “I want the NET!”

Some of you might not be familiar with the bushy tailed packrat common to these parts. If you have one living underneath the floor of your cabin they will sneak up at night and pack off anything they think is of value. Someone told me you can trick a packrat into returning all your stolen stuff by fastening something shiny and valuable to the floor of the cabin. Once the rat realizes he can’t pry your ‘gold nugget bait’ free of the floor, he will (supposedly) bring all the stolen loot back and pile it on the nugget. Of course he’ll also piss on the pile to let you know it’s still his stuff.

Someone could do an experiment to see if this trick would work with beekeepers. I don’t think it would.  I think the beekeeper just got the “pack-off” packrat allele, not the “returning” fragment. But maybe there’s a PhD student out there who could prove me wrong. Ted      

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