I finally got the packages mid morning on Thursday 4/29. The Post Office lady brought them up to the counter saying”they don’t look so good”. She was right. Mostly dead bees and a sour odor. I hustled up to the bee yard on Pumpkin Ridge and opened a “Bee Bus” the plastic shipping cage. No queen cage was evident. There was a plastic feeder jar with looked like remnants of blue sugar jelly and the bottom of the bee bus was 2” thick with dead, wet and sticky stinky bees. I dumped them atop an empty deep hoping to find a loose queen cage. No go.
Miles Seely had consented to come up and help me inspect my nucs and, hurrah!, we found lots of larvae. On his suggestion (thank you, Miles!) I placed the two remaining bee busses in the prepared deeps (after removing four frames to make room), installed the queen excluder, put the jelly feeder on top of the frames, and let any survivors find the fully drawn frames. Hopefully with a queen.
Alas, by morning the bus was empty and a tennis ball sized cluster was all that remained of the package. Miles, your suggestion saved a lot of messy cleanup!
Mann Lake will refund my cost but that is unlikely to endear them to me. It is the whole process of buying from afar, and in this case TWO failed shipments, which convinces me that local is the only way to go. Don’t get me started on eight days of anxiety (amiright Sherwood Christiansens?)!
In the end I have three new hive setups which will be empty this year. But on the upside there are three thriving TVBA nucs in my little aviary and I’m grateful for that. Next year fer sure