Shipping Note: For Iowa and surrounding states, the shipping charge is $15.  For all other states, select Express Shipping ($32.95).  We have started to use SpeeDee delivery for some of our surrounding states, as queens tend to arrive faster than they do through USPS, and they are also insured.  If you prefer USPS to states surrounding Iowa, please state this in the comments section during checkout. Thank you!

1. We ship queens Monday through Wednesday.

*Please include your phone number in check out so we can put it on the package* Boost your hive performance with a mated queen! Unlike some other suppliers, our queens are guaranteed to arrive alive. We do insure our shipped queens! If you are not seeing smooth capped brood, you may have a queenless hive. For more information on queens and how to determine your hive is queenless, visit our About Queen Bees page! This is a mated and marked queen, so she will be easy to locate when you check your hive. Our queens come in JZBZ Queen cages with a candy tube. The bees will eat out this tube over a couple days, so they get used to her smell and this increases queen acceptance rates. It is important to check and make sure the hive has let her out 48 hours after you introduce her to the hive. She will ship in a bright orange JZBZ box, specially designed to handle up to 20 queens. Both these containers are pictured. We ship via USPS because USPS because we can purchase insurance on shipments guaranteeing queens arrive alive even if there has been an error in delivery. It is very important that queens are not left in mailboxes. Once queens reach a temperature of approximately 103 degrees, they are likely to die. USPS also accepts the JZBZ special queen shipping containers, and is an affordable shipping option. Most sellers of queen bees do not guarantee that they will arrive alive, because many carriers will not insure bees. We have also started using SpeeDee delivery for queen shipments to Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota, Illinois and parts of Missouri. We have had queens arrive faster to these states through SpeeDee delivery than with USPS.  If you have a strong preference for USPS, please let us know. Otherwise, we will choose the carrier that will get you your queen the fastest. What to do with a purchased queen: You can purchase a queen in our online store. She will arrive in a orange shipping box made specially for shipping queen bees. She will come in a plastic JZ-BZ queen cage with five workers as her attendants. There will be a candy tube in the cage. When you install her, the worker bees from the hive will eat out the candy tube over a number of days, slowly letting her out. This give the hive time to get used to her queen pheromones, and increases the likelihood of queen acceptance. It is important that when your queen arrives she is never placed in direct sunlight. Install her in your hive as soon as possible. If you are requeening, you need to let your hive be queenless for at least an hour before you install a new queen. If you are able, leave the hive queenless for 24 hours. Pick two frames with a cluster of bees to wedge the cage between. These are usually brood frames if the hive has not been queenless for an extended amount of time. Wedge the cage between the frames with the candy tube facing down. Close the lid and wait two days. After waiting a few days, check and make sure that the queen was released from the cage. You can remove the cage at this time. Wait about a week to 10 days to reopen your hive. By this time, you should be able to see eggs and some larvae. You may even see capped brood by now if she got straight to work! From the time an egg is laid to when the larvae is capped, the unborn bee will be visited about 15,000 times by nurse bees to check on the brood, feed it, and eventually cap it around day 6. Keep in mind that eggs are very small, and sometimes very difficult to see, so check your hive carefully before determining that a queen was not accepted. A magnifying glass or magnifying glasses and head lamp can be useful for this task. Every queen is a little different. Some will begin laying right away, and some take a little while to get going. Once you have determined that your queen is accepted, you can sit back, enjoy your bees, and watch the honey come in! Please let us know if you have any questions! Contact Now. Thank you!