Buyer beware, do NOT use this seller.
There were so many things wrong with this transaction from the start, and I gave them chance after chance to make things right, and nothing.
To start, I ordered a 5 frame nuc for pick-up in Southern California. The company is based in Nor-Cal, so there was only one weekend pickup date, and I selected that at checkout. When it came near time to pick up the bees, I got an email saying I needed to pick them up near San Francisco!
I emailed the company several times, nothing. I tried calling over and over but nobody picked up and the voicemail was full. Finally I got an email back saying sorry, they had no more So-Cal bees available, and they would ship my bees. This was not ideal for me because I'm a first time beekeeper and I was concerned about trauma in shipping, heat, etc. But I decided to move forward. My bees were shipped, and they didn't arrive. The PO tracking number said they were "delayed indefinitely".
Finally after about 10 days, the mailman delivered my box, and all you could smell was death. The whole box reeked of dead bees. Trembling, I opened the box, and to my surprise, there were some bees still alive, but over half my workers were dead and rotting in the bottom of the box. There was condensation inside the box to the point it was leaking out and water in the bottom of the box from obviously poor ventilation caused by a plastic disposable nuc box that was only punctured with pinholes. I installed the nuc, thought I might've gotten a glimpse of the queen, and crossed my fingers.
When I installed the nuc, I noticed that while I had paid for a 5 frame nuc, there were only 4 frames. Worse, only maybe 1 1/2 frames were built out!!! The other 2 frames were brand new, untouched. And the 1/5 frames I had were built out, but there was nothing in the combs. No honey, no pollen, no brood. Nada.
Being a newbie, I started asking around to beekeeping friends and groups because I was confused. All the videos I had watched of 5 frame nucs had 5 actual built-out nucs laden with honey/brood/pollen stores. I came to the conclusion that my nuc must have been a double division which was falsely advertised as a full nuc. At the time I was assuming there had been brood and honey stores initially, but that the bees had eaten them to avoid starvation during the long delay at the PO, which I naturally assumed had been the fault of the PO.
I started contacting the seller, giving him the benefit of the doubt for the PO mishap, which obviously (so I thought) was not his fault. I told him I was filing a claim at the PO, but also told him I had some concerns about my nuc not being what it was advertised to be. I told Mike I was having trouble finding the queen and asked for help. He told me to give the bees sugar water and they'd be fine. He blamed everything on the PO.
Meanwhile I filed an insurance claim with the PO, because my bees were supposedly insured. Turns out they were only insured for $50, which the PO paid out, but my "insured" bees were not insured for full value.
Then the final blow was when I stumbled on Yelp reviewer Philip G's review, and finally I had answers. Philip G is a local beekeeper in San Francisco, and he was called to rescue the PO because a ton of bees had escaped due to poor packaging, all Beekeeper Mike's bees. My bees were among this lot, because the date of his incident lines up with where my bees were then. Philip G cites inhumane shipping conditions, dead and rotting bees, poor ventilation, and inappropriate shipping containers for the bees. So it turns out that the whole PO incident was not even the Post Office's fault, it all came back to Beekeeper Mike!
I wrote back to Beekeeper Mike, told him I knew that the PO incident was actually due to bad packaging, and told him the PO had only paid $50 on my claim. But I do have some bees and a chance that my colony will still survive, so I wanted to be fair. I asked for a partial refund of half the price of my colony, MINUS the $50 the PO had repaid. So my total with shipping was around $230 and I asked for $115-$50= $65 to be refunded. I told him I didn't want to cheat him by asking for the full hive to be refunded when my hive might still pull through. I told him if it was easier, I would accept a nuc next spring (for pickup!). I told him I would give him a week, and if he didn't make things right in the small amount I was requesting, I would contest the entire charge on my credit card, because the product I received was not as advertised, the box was not insured for the full value, as he said it was, and most of my bees died in transit due to his inhumane shipping practices.
You guessed it... nothing back from him. I even gave him a little more time. So now I am going to make sure the world knows about him, his inhumane treatment of bees, his repeated practice of providing 2 frame nucs instead of 5 frame nucs, and some of the most terrible customer service I've ever received. read more
