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Bought tubes -- but only pollen lumps, no bees?

3K views 5 replies 5 participants last post by  Seattleite 
#1 ·
I'm curious if anyone can lend some insight on this . . .

I bought some sealed tubes of bees from the Home Orchard Society in Portland, Oregon. I opened up about 10% of the tubes to inspect them, and I found almost no bees! The tubes were full of fully provisioned pollen lumps and intact mud plugs....but no bees, parasites, mites, immature larvae, or anything. Just dried pollen lumps and sealed cells filling the entire tube.

I'm out $65 plus shipping for them, so I'm somewhat annoyed (they are sold out now too.)


What could cause that?
 
#5 ·
That's one of the downsides to buying tubes instead of cleaned and inspected cocoons. Sounds like you have some cells the pollen mites maybe got to? Or some other issue occured, tubes might have been bumped in the spring. If the egg/larva gets bumped off the food source (pollen) they can't make it back on themselves and die.

I would certainly do a count of cocoons you did get by checking the rest. Then check their policy to see if they guarantee any number of cocoons per tube. You might be able to get some money back if you complain.

It's also still early enough you could probably still find cocoons in time for this season from another supplier. Knox cellars or a local hobbyist could likely still help you out.
 
#6 ·
Yeah, I contacted them, but no reply. Good point about the credit card.

I did find another supplier in Oregon on craigslist so hopefuly I can bump up the population.

I had a lot of pollen mites last year (~10%) but these tubes didn't have any--just pollen lumps with no sign of life. Perhaps they moved the tubes too early or handled them roughly.

I bought some cocoons from craigslist once that were cleaned and inspected, but a lot of the bees were still white immature pupae--turns out these folks had put their bees into a cool garage in early June, so they never got the heat they needed to mature.
 
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