Shipping conditions of honey bee queens

We placed small temperature monitoring devices inside queen shipments from across the U.S., during May and June, 1998. A total of 19 queen shipments, each containing 8 to 10 queens, were received from queen producers in Calif ornia, Texas, Hawaii, Georgia and Tennessee, Shipping methods included the U.S. Postal Service (Priority Mail, Express Mail and First Class Mail), and the United Parcel Service (WS Next Day Air and WS 2nd Day Air). The majori ty of shipments (58%) were sent via Priority Mail. A few shipments were imp roperly handled and experienced damage- a shattered wooden queen cage, seve ral broken dataloggers, queen cages displaced in a battery cage and several torn packages. Of the 170 queens shipped in our study, only 6 were dead up on arrival, but 4 of the 6 were from a single Texas shipment. Most of the s hipments (68%) experienced normal temperatures in the range of 50 to 97 deg rees F (10 to 36 degrees C), Two shipments experienced borderline cold cond itions in which the minimum temperatures just below 50 degrees F (10 degree s C), but did not remain cold for an extended period. The remaining four sh ipments experienced extreme conditions. One shipment experienced cold condi tions below chill coma (50 degrees F or 10 degrees C) for 4.25 hours and a temperature of 20 degrees F (-6.7 degrees C) for 1 hour, Nonetheless, the q ueens in this shipment survived. Three shipments experienced hot conditions . The highest temperature recorded in our study was 109 degrees F (43 degre es C); queens survived this temperature for approximately 2 hours.