Package Bees - Producing, Shipping, and Deceiving: Getting packages from the producer to you - quickly and efficiently

摘要

Some of my earliest memories of commercial beekeeping were visiting queen and package producers in South Alabama and Southwest Georgia. I'm not referring to some foggy event in the early 1900s, but only as far back as the early 1970s. Nearly every queen rearing book published in the U.S. have spectacular photos of long rows of baby nucs or photos of cell building yards from some of these operations. Many of those businesses are gone now. At the time, I was so moved by the vista of bee hives and bee work going on that I offered to work for one of the commercial operations - full time. Showing experience and wisdom, the owner told me to stay in school, get a degree in entomology and then see how I felt about spending my life shaking packages. He was right. I never went back. I'm not lazy, but it must be said that raising queens and shaking packages is hard work - but then again, what part of commercial beekeeping is not hard physical work?