Hardeman's

[Curtis]

I saw someone at Dadant in Virginia that received his nuc yesterday.
Good Luck to everone.
Curtis

[Limey]

From everything I have read, it appears the best thing to do is to order from a 3rd party. A company who places the big order with companies like Hardmans. Hardmans will go all out to complete those orders and to keep it's big customers happy at the expense of any small orders that they have directly.

This year I had placed an order with Drapers Bees and received them only 10 days late. Had I gone direct to the supplier, I would probably still be waiting.

[sqkcrk]

From everything I have read, it appears the best thing to do is to order from a 3rd party. A company who places the big order with companies like Hardmans. Hardmans will go all out to complete those orders and to keep it's big customers happy at the expense of any small orders that they have directly.

This year I had placed an order with Drapers Bees and received them only 10 days late. Had I gone direct to the supplier, I would probably still be waiting.

I understand what you are saying, but what's the point of having an ad in the bee mags if they aren't going to service their customers? I ordered 100 queens, not 1 or 10. But it shouldn't matter. Unless they want you to order their queens from a third party. If so, they should say so. Are third party queens cheaper than those from the original supplier?

[sqkcrk]

My queens came today. A month late, but they got here. Maybe they will do better next year. Though I think I'll order from more than one supplier at a time.

[dug_6238]

Still holding my breath, but I'm beeing told that I'm starting to turn blue...

:confused:, it's just a little too funny at this point to be :mad:

Maybe after this is all over I'll write a nice objective review here about my experience, but I think I've been doing that along the way...just maybe not in 25 words or less...

[dug_6238]

My packages arrived Thursday. Not very many dead bees in the bottom of the packages, but a couple of the queen cages had more dead attendants in them than I would have expected. One only had one live attendant left in it.

I was concerned that the Russian queens looked a little small and slim compared to my Italians that I've gotten, but one gentleman explained that they Russians will look a little smaller and slimmer. Entomology is not my strong point...

Will post later to list how the packages are doing. There was some more confusion on the shipping. I asked for a tracking number and was given a number that turned out not to be a tracking number, but rather just a delivery confirmation number. I checked back with Hardemans, they said they checked with the post office, and claimed that they were told that the packages had been delivered. This was a little frustrating being that neither of us had received our packages yet, and neither had our local post office.

We did find out later that day that our packages had made it to the regional USPS Distribution Center, so we just drove down there ourselves to pick them up there.

A little alarming though to have packages be 1 and 2 months late and then be told by the vendor that they've been delivered...but not have anything in your hands to show for it.

Let's hope performance of the end product can make up for some of the bad points in this experience. I'll post pics later too.

[BeeAware]

I had the same experience with another Georgia supplier. Told me the packages were already delivered and gave me a number. The Post Office had not received the packages and said the number that I was given was invalid.
When I phoned the shipper again to explain this, they said that was between me and the Post Office that they were finished with the transaction. I think many of the bee breeders are better bee breeders than they are business people!

[okb]

Still holding my breath, but I'm beeing told that I'm starting to turn blue...

:confused:, it's just a little too funny at this point to be :mad:

Maybe after this is all over I'll write a nice objective review here about my experience, but I think I've been doing that along the way...just maybe not in 25 words or less...

I think you could have beelined a swarm by this point maybe more than one.