Anyone have recent contact with Russell Apiaries? Placed an on-line order for queens with them on Jan 20. Payment went through but I have never received an order confirmation from them and all attempt to contact them have failed.
I am happy with Russell on all counts. I don't expect to see any queens at the PO til after the shipping dates listed on their website. I also am not expecting to be coddled by customer service. I do come to bee source and search for posts by rrussell6870. Some of the best threads on this sight are contributed to by him. They will let you know when your queens are ready and shipping. Relax. Enjoy your bees. You will get a great product. I you need to talk, get a dog (or get married).
I only ordered two Russell Apiaries SunKist Cordovan queens, the post office killed those first two, Russell Apiaries immediately sent a double set of replacements, two again by USPS, and the second set by UPS Next Day Air. This time both sets arrived in excellent health. From my experience Russell Apiaries has both very excellent customer service and exceptional product. I greatly appreciate having connected up with them last year. The SKC queens I obtained from them and the daughters I've raised from them have been some of the most resilient bees I've dealt with, yet.
I found Russell Apiaries last year after being on this site. I ordered queens from them last season. They came here perfectly and they were very helpful to me. I ordered from them because it became apparent to me that they were very pro beekeepers big and small and really cared about the future of honeybees. I joined the Russell website and learned about their incredible family history in Beekeeping. Last year the weather was tough for breeding because of rain and there were tornadoes that hit their area and they still got bees to me. I'm a relatively new beekeeper and feel privileged to have some of The Russell Apiaries Bees in my yard. I ordered some queens this year too a Moonbeam and a German Black Bee and I'm excited to get them. When the queens are ready and things line up I'm sure they will be shipped to me in good health. The Sunkist bees are beautiful. I had a dream in the fall that I was at a Russell Apiaries Barbecue in Mississippi. LOL It was a cool dream. Whenever I see Russell anything on here I read it
Well Mr. Happy i am going to raise queens from the one i got from Russell and i do not have a problem with his bees the ones i have seen blows my mind. As for what i am doing is very different and he knows what he is doing. Now twinkiebee thanks for the pm if you can help me with what i need then we can talk some more Russell is busy and the queen i got from him came late from when i ordered her but she made up for being late and is doing darn good now i admit i was a little worried about ordering but i was reassured that thing s are going to be good so i am all in thanks Twinkiebee.
I am having a little trouble understanding the vitriol I am hearing. I have ordered a lot of queens from many suppliers through the years and almost universally I would contact the office and ask about availability. They can almost always tell you how far out they are on bookings and give you an approximate shipping date. What if anything they might require down would usually be determined by your history as a customer. Payment is always due on receipt or if they don't know you then it would be due before shipment. it would not be unusual to hear that your date is getting pushed back because of weather issues or bad catches. I have never purchased from Russells but based on what I have read on here he has many happy customers but I think it's also fair to say that there are at least a few unhappy ones. I don't really think Barry was out of line by suggesting that as a consumer you always have the option of taking your business elsewhere. Perhaps someone could explain how the order process works there. Is there a target ship date at the time the order is placed and any procedures in place to keep anxious customers up to date if it appears those dates are being pushed back? I completely understand the problems of running a business such as this, I also think it is fair to say that there are probably some weaknesses in the system that need addressed. If I might also state that a common theme with breeders is pride in their product, Russells aren't alone in that. I have yet to have someone tell me they believe their bees are the second best available.
I am having a little trouble understanding the vitriol I am hearing. I have ordered a lot of queens from many suppliers through the years and almost universally I would contact the office and ask about availability. They can almost always tell you how far out they are on bookings and give you an approximate shipping date. What if anything they might require down would usually be determined by your history as a customer. Payment is always due on receipt or if they don't know you then it would be due before shipment. it would not be unusual to hear that your date is getting pushed back because of weather issues or bad catches.
Thats what I have been saying. You buy a product based on whats important to you. By all means, buy what you want. But making 12 or 13 negative posts in one thread when you have no experience at all with a company is out of line.
We have three sets of customers. All of which get to pick their PREFERRED ship date and we try to stick to that as closely as we can. When a schedule gets filled, we close off those dates of availability.
New or Basic customers place their orders online or through the mail.
VIP customers are given hand chosen queens by Russell himself and select stock.
Then we have our Long Term customers, some of which have been buying several thousand queens from us every year for the past 40+ years. These have a long established credit with us and so they dont pay until the queens ship or they pick them up.
We cage queens Sunday through Thursday and ship Monday through Thursday. There are some logistics involved, but that is the simplified version.
When the order is placed paypal automatically sends two emails, one to the buyer and one to the office. This is the confirmation/receipt email. The email that we receive is printed and put in a separate file for each customer. The data from each order is uploaded into our systems and the caging schedule is broken up by strain and is then uploaded to the portals for each strains mating operation. They use this system as a foresight to begin producing each cycle of queens on a strick schedule. When the queens are caged they are raced to the regional postal hubs that are closest to the mating operation, then they are bundled by order and placed on the trucks after everything else is loaded so they will be the first to get unloaded.
I am very satisfied with the customer service from Russell Apiaries. It sometimes has taken a few days but they responded to every email that I have sent them. The queens I ordered last year arrived later than expected but it was because of weather problems. It worked out okay for me because we had a cold wet spring here and hives weren't really ready to split when scheduled anyway. Russell's didn't just ship the queens when they became available but emailed first and asked if I was ready for them. I thought that was a nice touch. They shipped them out that same evening and I picked them up at 10:30 the next morning. Their email response was very fast when it counted (the day the queens were ready).
I imagine that there are other queen producers whose product is on a par with Dr. Russell's but I am happy to purchase from him mostly because I have seen how he has gone out of his way to help some of the other forum members. I am grateful that he is supporting those of us who order small quantities.
Re the customer service side, as a one time commercial breeder myself, I would hazard to say that it's a virtual impossibility to give 100% excellent customer service, every time.
I think a business selling non perishables probably could. But what happens in queen breeding is you are taking orders pretty much 12 months of the year, and recording peoples preferences as to when they want their order shipped. You have to match this up with what you think you can produce, but when the time comes weather and whatever else can go wrong, somebody is not going to get what they want, when they want it. Now at the same time, when it was main season and I was trying to meet commitments, I can remember starting work 5.30 in the morning, basically running all day, and sometimes working bees by the truck lights at night. Just to try to get it all done. There just was not time to contact all those people however much of a good thing that would have been.
So bottom line, was the great majority of people were fully satisfied. But the very nature of the business means there's going to be a few situations you wish you could have done better. I think this will be common to all queen breeders, except ones that don't have a waiting list.
Twinkie one of your responses could have been what saved my bees in October. Thanks for your help. I know there were two ladies there giving me good advice when the Doc was out of town.
OT:True enough. I am not here to impugn the Russell operation which I have no first hand knowledge of. The simple fact remains, though, that bad news travels much faster than good news does. Customer service is a big issue with any business that deals with the general public. Poor customer service or even the image of poor customer service can bring down businesses regardless of the quality of their final product. From my perspective (and this is speaking as a commercial) I don't care how good someones queens may be, if they are a month or more late they are of virtually no use to me. I am not suggesting that this happens much in this case only that timeliness is a very, very important part of the whole customer service scenario.
I would agree with you on a limited basis. If I need a queen to do a split, if it's a month late I lost a swarm, and then the split queen is of no use to me. We are on the same page as far as that goes.
But Russell does not market his queens mainly for splits and re-queening duds. He will tell you that as well. He markets his queens based on their genetics. You don't order (hopefully) a queen from Russell's for splits or re-queening. You order them to increase your overall genetic makeup. Then, drones in your area are better off, next years supersedures and reared queens are better, and so on.
I think it goes back to that tire analogy. If you want a certain type of tire, and it's on back order, you can't predict when it will be available. So, you either ride out the tire you have, or buy a replacement and wait for the tire you really want to come back in stock. When it does, either throw the old tire away or sell it to someone else.
I run an aquatics service business. We deal with livestock in a very narrow temperature window when a pond can be serviced, fully drained, without killing the large koi. I handle all customer contact, and am on every job site. Since many other pond services folded, and our high temps came on too early, last year there were more ponds than days with the weather that would allow us to service them, until November, when I proceeded to get involved in a wreck with a semi - Sometimes I drop the ball. Here's hoping for a profitable spring with mostly happy customers for all of us. At least the ones I got to last year want us back...
Russell has always responded to my PM's on the forums, but I can't say the same for emails to the website asking about products, shipping quotes or queen dates. I ended up ordering 20 queens from other producers.
If they are that covered up, I think it's time to hire some temps to answer the phone/email. That or Russell can barter queens/bees with me for a new website that can handle some of the heavy lifting.
We ordered 10 nucs from Russell several months ago for early spring delivery. No confirmation. We have left several voice messages. No answer. We have emailed several times. Unanswered. I recognize that this is not Wal-Mart but what the heck. Nice web site. No problem processing payment. If you have mastered the technology to produce web sites and process payments. ANSWER THE PHONE OR SEND AN EMAIL.
Had trouble posting a response. But I sent an email inquiry to the email address listed on the "Contact" page of their website earlier today about an order and received a very timely response. I am MOST satisfied with my experience
Thank you VB at Russell Apiaries!
Had trouble posting a response. But I sent an email inquiry to the email address listed on the "Contact" page of their website earlier today about an order and received a very timely response.
I ordered woodware in early January, and by late February hadn't seen it. Emailed, they refunded my paypal but let me know they would still ship my woodenware when it came in. I needed stuff built so I got a bunch from Dadant - a friend picked it up in Paris and saved me the shipping. I got a surprise visit from UPS today - from Russell Apiaries. Big box of woodenware. (order was about a hundred dollars.) No advance notice. Now I can see if this were queens it might be a problem, many days I am on the road until quite late, and a queen sitting in my mailbox would be cooked. But because I know this if I did order Russell queens I'd merge my order with a friend who is at home more, let them receive and call me. And one day, I will order Russell queens.
The quality of the product and the quality and quantity of communication aren't the same thing.
The state of Mississippi requires certification to sell Bee's and Queens. Might want to stick with the folks on the list. Here's the link to the list that was updated Nov. 2011. Our state inspector for the southern district is Charles Wilson 601-544-3866 or email: Charles@mdac.state.ms.us
I wondered about that when I saw this list earlier in the year. Can you sell queens in MS without being on this list? And if not, how is Russell able to sell queens?
Since my first choice for bees would be Texas suppliers, I see no reason to read the Mississippi list. If I got a Russell queen she would be a very special purchase indeed, and nothing would convince me to buy any other breed.
I am also a very happy Russell Apiaries customer. In my limited experience they are the best queens I have owned. The service was great, as they delayed my order at my request to accommodate changes in my schedule due to the delay in the availability of nucs and when there was an issue with the order they not only made it right they included several extra queens to compensate. If I have any negatives in service it would be the delay in response time, but when I was contacted back the results were beyond satisfactory.
I have ordered more queens for this spring and will continue to use them in the future.
PS checked the hives at lunch. 45F and overcast with light wind. 5 for 5 working and 3 really getting after it. All Russell's.
He doesn't produce queens in Mississippi. His home is here so there is an office here and a research yard here. Mississippi is where his dad's operation was. Robert has always had bees all over. Robert's brother killed almost all of his dad's hives by stealing nucs out of them during beetle season. His dad asked Robert to step in and save what was left when he found out what the brother was doing. Then Robert's dad passed away and Robert still keeps up the last few hives that his dad had for sentimental purposes and uses them to study different issues so that other people can use the research to keep their bees alive. The bees that Robert's brother took are all dead now.
For what its worth brackishwater, the research yard was inspected this season by the director of bpi and was approved. Russell will be on that list soon just to stop people from spreading confusion like that.
He doesn't produce queens in Mississippi. His home is here so there is an office here and a research yard here. Mississippi is where his dad's operation was. Robert has always had bees all over. Robert's brother killed almost all of his dad's hives by stealing nucs out of them during beetle season. His dad asked Robert to step in and save what was left when he found out what the brother was doing. Then Robert's dad passed away and Robert still keeps up the last few hives that his dad had for sentimental purposes and uses them to study different issues so that other people can use the research to keep their bees alive. The bees that Robert's brother took are all dead now.
Amethysta, send me a pm with your name and question if you haven't heard anything back from the email yet.
Everyone, there is a page on our site called "Shipping & Dates" that has the answers to most of the questions that we receive. There is also a category called "Updates" in our forums that can answer even more questions. Take a look at these places to see if your questions have already been answered before emailing or calling please. Thank you!
ND, there are mating and selection pool yards in 14 states. The acclimation program is expanding this season also. Robert Hughes was telling me that by the end of this season Russell should have selection pools in 46 of the 50 states being specifically selected for success within each state.
Wildbranch, I will ask him. I know that the hives are all still alive and look very good. They have a big red stripe across the lid and I have seen guys taking samples from them a lot since last season. I don't know exactly what they have found yet but will ask and post about it.
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