Good Evening Beekeepers,
I have had a number of folks ask lately if it was time to order bees yet. I have also had a few beekeepers call with worry that they had missed the opportunity to order so this is a status update to let you know where we are in the process. At this point we have about a third of the bee orders in; so I am sending this out to those who I have not received orders yet.
There is still plenty of time to get your order in for your bees, and we will likely have a good supply for at least a month. The sooner that you can get your order in, the better it will be for us in planning the final details of the shipment. The breeding of our queens takes about a month; so the sooner I can supply close estimates for type and quantity of our queens, the easier it is for our supplier to get us exactly what we need.
As many of you know, last year we had some challenges to overcome in order to get our bees up to Alaska. The ground transportation system that we used for a number of years decided to not carry live animals and this necessitated a change of transport systems. To this end I purchased a truck and trailer and had it specifically set up for transporting bees. Ventilation systems with electric fans as well as redesigning doors and vents were required to keep the bees at the proper temperature during transport. Our ground transportation system was an upgrade over the system that we had used in the past by allowing us better control over our bees as well as closer monitoring of the land portion of the journey.
As many of you also know, I accompanied the bees on each of the shipments last year to make sure that things went well. The extra work involved was well worth the effort, and the bees showed no signs of stress during the entire journey. Although there are always things that can go wrong, I feel that we have the best system worked out for moving bees from Northern California to Alaska. We will be moving our bees in a very similar fashion this year. We have replaced the trailer used last year in California with a slightly larger one and patterned our ventilation system after the one we used last year. We will be adding a cooling system to it this spring as a safety factor to be prepared for warm transport temperatures in the event that weather patterns dictate cooling beyond fresh air flow. The trailer we used last spring in California is now in Alaska and will be used on this end of the journey after receiving the bees here in Anchorage. Once again I will be accompanying the bees for their overland portion and assuring proper loading configuration for air cargo at the terminal. We are committed to providing the best and healthiest packages to you that can be done.
Our bee supplier is the same as it has been for many years, and I continue to be very pleased with the quality and consistency of John’s queens and packages. Our policy of standing behind the packages and queens that we supply from John remains the same as it has been for many years. Your package should be healthy, not stressed during transport, and the queen should be fertile and in good health when you get your bees from us. Our website is updated with the latest information on bee supplies as well as package bees and has the ability to order both bees as well as supplies online. For those who wish to call or if you have questions that I can answer for you feel free to call.
Steve
892-6175 home
315-5256 cellular
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