What are you going to do with your bees over the winter?
Kill them off and start with packages in the spring?
Timing, weather and quality of packages dictate success or failure!
Truck them to Texas?
Add up the cost of transport, room and board, site fees, feeding and much more. Oh, and don't forget the fun
of driving home for the holidays.
The following letter still says it as well today as it did in 2001.
Ok, ok, the coumaphos strip may be a little out of date. :-)
I look forward to hearing from you.
Eric Lane Apiaries
8611 Road 238
Terra Bella, CA 93270
(559) 535 5430 cell (559) 280 4709
fax (559) 535 5471
www.Lanesbees.com
July 27, 2001
Dear Fellow BeeKeepers:
I
would like to take a minute of your time to tell you about a service I am offering.
First, at the end of the honey
season, do you kill your bees and store your supers, only to buy package bees at the beginning of the next year? Or, in the
fall, do you move your bees thousands of miles, pay rent for your bees, your help and yourself for six or seven months, drive
thousands of miles home for the holidays and then make the same trip back to where you have your bees stored?
If
either of the above has been your mode of operation, then I have an offer for you! I call it Beeby Stting! The
concept is quite simple. At the end of your honey season, you send me your beehives. I will watch them and care
for them through the winter, here in California, and return them to you on an agreed upon date the next spring. They
will be full of bees and brood, with good queens, ready to produce a crop. You pay for the cost to ship the hives to
me and I will pay to ship them back.
That’s
it! All I ask of you is to send me good bees, leave honey in the hive bodies sufficient to winter them without having
to feed them excessively, and place a coumaphos strip in each hive before shipping them to me. I, in turn, will see
that they are kept safe, that they have enough feed and water and, that when it is time to return them to you, they are in
perfect shape to start producing a crop immediately.
Consider
taking the winter off! No worries about your hives! Not storage costs! No expenses to winter them!
No start up costs in the spring! No worrying about the weather – will it cooperate to build package bees
into hives before, not after, the honey flow starts.
If
this offer interests you, please give me a call. It is a new century, a new millennium and this is a new way to work
the bee business!
Sincerely,
Eric Lane
Eric Lane Apiaries 
