In April you will be asking yourself where and when the bees will arrive and how do I know when they get there?
Because we have done this many times, we have developed a system that works fairly well for us as well as for you. Here is how it works: The week of delivery we send out emails to all those who are due to get their bees that Saturday. In the email we will lay out our approximated schedule for delivery. You will have directions to the location, and we will post them here on this site as well under the News tab. Since we will be transporting the bees both in California and in Alaska, we will be on the road from mid-week until you get your bees on Saturday. We will be able to send out an update if there is anything that looks like it will delay the shipment arrival on Saturday morning in Anchorage.
The default always is that everything is on schedule unless you hear otherwise.
On Saturday morning we will be at the airport to greet and collect the bees as they arrive at airfreight.
As soon as we have received the bees and assessed the situation, we will update our home answering machine at our house in Big Lake. 892-6175 is the number that you can call to find out the status of the bees. We will also update the website under the News tab at the top. In the past, the home answering recorder has been difficult to reach at moments of high call volume. We will be busy loading hundreds of packages of bees into our trailers and will not be able to answer our cell phones at this time. Once the bees are on the way to the first delivery point we will update the home answering machine as well as the News portion of the website to let you know the time we expect the packages to be ready for pickup. It takes us a few minutes to get the trailer unloaded at the pickup point with the right number of packages and each kind of queen.
If we get delayed at any distribution point and it looks like the schedule will change for other delivery areas, we will update the home answering machine and the website to let you know.
Each time we leave a distribution point we update the home machine and website and let folks know that the distribution point we just left is ready for you to pick up your bees.
Keep in mind that even though the home machine is a recorder, it functions primarily as a message machine to you and it is not necessary to leave a us message. If there is a problem with your order by all means, leave us a message and send us an email as well if possible so that there is a backup to a missed message on our busiest days.
Please remember that the bees will be at somebody's house who is gracious enough to host a bit of madness in the spring. It is best for the bees to be picked up promptly and given some feed as soon as they are available. In most cases they will arrive early enough in the day for you to get them into the hive. If you will be delayed retrieving your bees please let the host (or us) know.