Queen Bees and the USPS

Yesterday we received a special package in the mail - more queen bees to requeen some hives with soon. Note to self: when shipping live animals, it would be good to mark the packaging so that the mail carrier can call the recipient to pick up the package rather than have the poor animals ride in the mail truck. But...the package WAS humming quite loudly so if I was the mailperson, I think I probably would have handled this envelope with extra care. :)

I shot a Queens buzzing video in case you want to hear what buzzing queens sound like when they are in an envelope.

US Postal Service

This shout out is for our friend Jim, who works for the US Postal Service here in town. He was so kind and kept an eye out for our special delivery of queen bees that came shipped through the mail. Did you know you can do that? Before I learned these beekeeping things from Mark, I never even thought about how beekeepers get their supplies. And then I learned that you can order and receive equipment AND live bees in your mailbox! Or sometimes they may call you to come and pick up your package. :-) Must be something to process livestock in the mailroom. Can you imagine the buzzing?? lol

This is our box of twenty queen bees from Zia out of New Mexico. The free-flying bees are attendant bees who are tasked with tending to the queens' needs. Beekeeping is so cool!

Boxed & Shipped

We made it to the post office today during lunch so that we can get these boxes shipped off to family and a friend. Today was the last day to ship in time for Christmas using parcel post and even with that they couldn't absolutely guarantee it'd get there in time. This year, we noticed that with priority mail, if our box exceeded certain measurements, they were going to tag on some surcharge. WHAT?? When did that happen?? I guess I should have thought to read the US Postal Service site or something. I just had not heard of that and on some of our boxes, it more than doubled the priority mail cost. Needless to say, those went parcel post. Hmm...might be time to look at FedEx and UPS next year. :-)