Did you know that the bee is the only living animal allowed to be shipped through the U.S. Postal service? Pretty cool! This is how many beekeepers receive their queens. If you are a beginning beekeeper, you can have a whole "swarm" sent to you with the queen. They are sent in little wood "cages." If the trip is 2 days or longer, the seller will probably include a small piece of candy and a few worker bees to help the queen with the trip. Of course they need a proper air supply and the temperatures can't be too hot or cold. Davey said that a year or two ago he had about 400 queens that died on the trip because the air circulation was cut off during transportation. One thing to know is that the mail carrier will not insure things like bees, so if they die during the trip, they will not be reimbursing the buyer or the seller. The loss has to be decided between the beekeeper and the bee seller. From everything I've heard, it seems the popular places to buy bees from are Hawaii and Georgia.

What happens to bees in winter? I guess you could call it a sort of hibernating that happens every winter in a beehive. Bees will cluster for warmth and snack on the honey that they have made during the warmer months. For a beehive, 40 degrees during winter is a good temperate to have the hive at and the bees will stabilize this as much as possible. The queen will actually "shut down" laying eggs in the winter and also a bee's metabolism will slow down and the reduced activity allows a bee to actually live a couple weeks longer than it would in summer time.

Just got off the phone with Davey Hackenberg! He's taking a short break in Florida now, but he has two loads of bees currently in California doing some much needed pollination! He said the blooms are about 35% open right now, so it sounds like another typical start for crops out there. This is the time of year where he is repairing equipment and working on splitting bees to create more hives. He tries to replace all the queens at least every spring (if not every 6-8 months). Although the worker bees have to adapt to/accept the new queen bee, the queens he buys have already mated so they can start laying broods within only a couple days of being in the hive. Who knew!?
Also, if there are any beekeepers reading this who may pollinate crops, Davey advises for you to keep the price of pollination up because keeping bees is expensive and especially with all the bee loss occurring, it is important not to give your services out for free. If you take your bees to a crop that has lots of pesticides on it, you may not have half of your bees left a few months down the road.

There are many sources on the internet that say bees cannot not fly in rain and that bees will not fly in temperatures under 50 degrees F. This is not the case. Bees are able to fly in these conditions, but many times prefer not to. Just like people, bees will acclimate to the climate they are in after a while. 

Yesterday afternoon brought big news in the honey world. ICE and CBP charged two large American honey processors (Honey Solutions of TX and Groeb Farms of Michigan) with evading customs duties and knowingly buying and selling illegal Chinese honey to American consumers. The schemes not only cost the US government at least $180 million in duties and fees, but it could have directly affected you as well. Some of the honey even had illegal antibiotics in it. These companies sell honey to large food manufacturers who use honey as ingredients in their products. A lot of people say they don't really eat honey when in fact they do. Honey is used as an ingredient in many food products found in the regular grocery store. Studies have shown that the average American consumes somewhere around one pound of honey per year. You could have consumed illegal antibiotics in your honey cereal without even knowing.