To ELIMINATE the chance your queen/bees are killed in your mailbox right outside your home PLEASE follow the directions below:
1. Warn your USPS carrier that you have a live animal shipment coming Monday of your ship week.
2. Call the Post Office, let them know to call you the morning your live shipment arrives. The telephone number on the package is the one you entered at the time you ordered.
3. If you do not get a call and your tracking number reads ‘Out for Delivery’ we suggest taping your mailbox shut and putting a note for them to honk or deliver to your door. It is a shame for the queens/bees to be wasted because the last final step was the wrong one (placing live animals in a closed space, in the sun). Please do everything you can to prevent this.
4. It is vital to hive your queens asap – especially if attendants have started to die. If your queen arrives alive with a couple (or all) dead attendants do not hold her for several days to see how she does… hive her. The longer she is in a cage outside of the hive the higher the likelihood is she will die. If you cannot hive your queens immediately store them away from ants, out of sun, away from pesticides, and without air blowing directly onto them. Water your queens with ONE DROP of water a day – never spray the cage. Wet, sticky queens die quickly. The queen cages have candy, so you do not need to feed them honey. If you have 1-2 dead attendants this is normal, 3 or more dead attendants means they are very stressed, please hive your queens asap.
5. In the unfortunate event of a dead or damaged shipment please take photos and email the details to: STORE@BEEWEAVER.COM. All dead or damaged shipments must be reported within 24 hours of arrival, and pictures must be provided to our email.
Keep It Simple, most of a Beekeeper’s job is to help the bees with: Nutrition, Population, Shelter.
- Keep your bees well fed with 1:1 sugar syrup (by weight), but only feed proportionally (IE: small amount for small population) to their size and if there is a need (IE: no or hardly no stored honey/syrup). Generally, if you have 1 frame of honey for every frame of brood your hive has plenty of stores.
- Check for a laying queen after hiving the bees, and make sure she is alive and well with each hive check (look for her and/or her eggs – if you see eggs you know she is there).
- After failure to feed a new hive, the biggest beginner mistake is to give the colony too much room too soon (adding a honey super or second hive body). Only give your hive more room if the bees have drawn & filled 7-9 combs in the bottom deep, AND are continuing to build up, or on a honey flow. Supering recommendations more generally are beyond the scope of this message.
