Tag: bee day

2023 Live Bees Update

We talked with some bee breeders in CA about the upcoming bee season and they expressed concern about the quantity and quality of bees they will be able to produce for the 2023 season.

They have bee yards in multiple areas and they have stressors in most yards (draught, local flooding, some even lost hives to fires).

Commercial operations are planning more on recovering their colony numbers and strength than selling packages or nucs for starter hives.

At this point, we decided not to bring live bees for sale for the 2023 season.

If you are getting started in beekeeping in 2023, we’d recommend you try to get bees from a local beekeeper (they could sell you a nuc from a split or you could catch a swarm).

If you still want to buy packages or nucs, we would recommend contacting your local bee association. You may need to wait until February, as suppliers confirm the number of colonies they can sell after they evaluate their overwinter survival rates.

The following beekeepers contacted BeeManiacs and confirmed they are going to be selling live bees during the 2023 season. You can find more information on their websites:

https://halfmoonbees.myshopify.com

Live Bees Pickup Schedule

Another update was sent by email to all the beekeepers that bought live bees from BeeManiacs. Please check your email and if you didn’t receive anything on April 15, check your spam or other email folders and adjust your email to make sure you receive our updates.

This is the link to the email sent: https://mailchi.mp/93a81b90c89e/package-bee-bee-day-date-confirmation-13620213

Package and nuc pickup hours are from 8:00 am to 1:00 pm on Sunday, April 24.

Pickup address:
7619 W Woolard Rd
Deer Park, WA 99006

Drive-Thru process

  1. You can enter BeeManiacs from the main entrance and head towards the Big Barn where the drive-thru line forms
  2. While in the line, a BeeManiacs employee will approach and ask for the name of the person that placed the order
  3. At that point, BeeManiacs staff will set your packages and any material you pre-ordered online at the pickup area
  4. Stay in the line and continue driving until you reach the pickup area (concrete area outside the Big Barn)
  5. You may now get out of your vehicle and load your bees/material
  6. To exit, continue driving around the garden and BeeManiacs store building until you reach the main road

Please note that our store remains closed for in-person visits. You can place online orders for equipment and tools ahead of time (until Friday 4/22) and we will have the material ready for you to pick up with the bees.

Live Bees Pickup Email Update

We are already sending emails to all beekeepers that ordered packages or nucs. If you ordered bees, please check your email and make sure you get these updates regarding pickup date. Later we will send more updates and information as we get closer to bee day.

In this link, you can see the email update content: https://mailchi.mp/53c8d07db81a/package-bee-bee-day-date-confirmation-13617385

Below we transcribe some of the updated content.

Everything is looking good for a pickup date of Sunday, April 24.

The queens are mating with good weather in CA and at this time the suppliers don’t anticipate any production issues or delays.

For pickup, we recommend that you do not bring anyone that is afraid of bees. While the bees are enclosed in their box, there will be bees flying around.

We’d recommend transporting the packages at “room temperature” and most beekeepers will transport packages with them inside the vehicle to avoid overheating or too much airflow.

If you are getting nucs this year, we’d recommend transporting the nucs secured on the back of a pickup truck with plenty of ventilation. They need air circulation to be able to cool off the colony

If you bring the bees inside the vehicle, we will do our best to brush off any bees on the outside of the box and you can transport them with the AC on to avoid overheating.

You could also set the box inside a mesh that provides ventilation while keeping the bees contained. You can bring your mesh or we also have them available at the BeeManiacs store.

Package pickup schedule

Please note that if you ordered a package of bees through BeeManiacs, we are sending updates and notices to the email used when placing the order. Emails are received from “BeeManiacs” and using the MailChimp email distribution server. Just in case anyone didn’t receive the email, we’re also adding the content as a post.

Package pickup hours are from 8 am to noon on this Saturday, April 18. 

Due to COVID-19 we will operate a drive-thru style pickup for this Saturday and we have recommended pick up hours based on the first name of the beekeeper that placed the order for packages.

The table below shows the suggested hours for picking up packages, based on which letter your name starts with. These are just suggestions to spread the number of cars during the whole pickup schedule, avoiding a traffic jam. If you cannot come at the recommended time, you can come at any time between 8:00 am and noon.

For example, if your name is Lisa, we recommend that you come to pick up your packages between 9:30 and 10:00 am. 

Drive-Thru process

  1. You can enter BeeManiacs from the main entrance and head towards the Big Barn where the drive-thru line forms
  2. While in the line, a BeeManiacs employee will approach and ask for the name of the person that placed the order
  3. At that point, BeeManiacs staff will set your packages and any material you pre-ordered online at the pickup area (on top of a table or on the cement floor)
  4. Stay in the line and continue driving until you reach the pickup area (concrete area outside the Big Barn)
  5. You may now get out of your vehicle and load your bees/material
  6. To exit, continue driving around the garden and BeeManiacs store building until you reach the main road

Please note that our store remains closed due to COVID-19. You can place online orders ahead of time (until Friday 17) and we will have the material ready for you to pick up with the bees.

BeeManiacs Team

Planning on buying equipment on April 28? Please read on.

Bee Day is usually a busy day.

If you are just picking up pre-ordered package/s, you could do it quickly. You will first get a printed copy of your invoice with a voucher to get the package/s and just pick up the packages whenever you are ready. That simple and pretty fast (we will send more details in another email).

But for beekeepers purchasing material in the store, in 2017 we experienced long lines of up to 2 hours to get through the checkout process. We have implemented many improvements for 2018, hoping to speed up the process as much as possible.

For local beekeepers, we still recommend purchasing and picking up all of your beekeeping equipment before April 28. So you will just need to pick up bees that day.

But we have some beekeepers coming from the Seattle area and central Montana (about an 8-hour drive). Since they come from far away, they will be purchasing some items on that very same day.

To  make the order process faster, you can place orders on our website and select “Pick up at Store.”

The deadline for placing an order online that will be ready to pick up on bee day, is Monday, April 23. All online orders received by April 23 will be confirmed and will be ready to pick up on April 28. We will have your material packed and ready to pick up right next to the bees (no need to go through checkout in the store).

We have also improved our checkout system, so we can process multiple orders in parallel (we used to have a single register).

For placing orders online ahead of time, please follow this link:
https://beemaniacs.com/shop/

We hope that all the improvements we made will provide a better experience for all of our visitors that day.

Bee Day and Other Events

We are finally done with bringing live bees to the area. It was a very exciting yet busy time. Exciting because we love to bring bees to all beekeepers, especially the ones starting for the first time. Busy because due to the bad weather conditions we had to reschedule delivery dates several times.

Bee Day was a huge success, with about 300 people stopping by BeeManiacs to pick up or talk bees, buy plants or take a hands-on class. Volunteers from the Backyard Beekeepers Association stepped in and helped control traffic and parking lot and took over teaching the hands-on demonstrations.

We are already making plans for the 2018 BeeManiacs Bee Day, but one of the most difficult issues to solve is where to park more cars. The current extended parking area was filled up and we could fit more cars in our back 5 acres, but that could undermine the health of the pollinator-friendly plants we have there. We will figure this out before the next Bee Day.

Below you can see some pictures from Bee Day, hands-on Field Days and other live bees pickup dates.

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2017 BeeManiacs Bee Day

We are going to host the first BeeManiacs Bee Day on April 15, 2017.

This will be a very interesting event for beekeepers, with many activities and vendors available that day. That’s the day packages and nucs will be available to be picked up for beekeepers that pre-ordered them at http://livebees.beemaniacs.com/

If you want to buy or sell equipment or tools, we will be hosting a Beekeeping Equipment Swap.

Vendors can participate for free!

To keep the information centralized we have created a new page on our website. Please find more information at this link: https://beemaniacs.com/beemaniacs-bee-day/

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