# H T Krantz Queens



## Hoot Owl Lane Bees (Feb 24, 2012)

H T Krantz looked like they were a very good supplier of Queens after some research on line.
What a surprise. I ordered 8 Queens on November 23 2017, in 2 different orders, with a delivery date of April 30 2018.
I received a receipt for the first order but not the 2nd. 
I did have my pay pal receipt's.
I sent them a email March 22 asking about the second receipt with no reply.
April 3 I received an email from Krantz that the April 30 Queens are delayed do to weather, that I understand as I am from Lancaster Pa. area.
I replied back and asked about my receipt again even gave them a copy of the pay pal receipt.
I was wanting to confirm how many Queens I would be getting? 4 or 8.
Here is what I received back.

HT Krantz Honey Co <[email protected]>
Apr 3
to me 
Ill have to look it up when i get back to my office. The last 2 weeks in March were on the road with little to no access to email. 

Sent from my iPhone

After no reply I asked again for the receipt on April 14, I finely got my confirmed receipt on April 19.
They had just completed there first grafts.
I thanked him and wished them luck with the weather.
On May 1st I asked about a rough delivery date, and how the Queen rearing was going as mine was way behind also and did not want to run short of capped brood for 8 nucs at one time.
His reply was, Looking like 2 weeks.

Yesterday at 11:00 our mail lady calls the house that I have bees at the post office.
I checked my emails on my phone and no calls, email or text from H T Krantz at all?:s

My wife and I were 70 miles away for a Mothers day weekend.
Our Daughter was home and had to drive 25 miles and just made it to the Post Office a few minuets before it closed.
I had just set up a strong cell starter/finisher hive on Thursday and was wondering where I was going to get 16 + frames for these nucs.
I have honey and pollen frames ready in the freezer but need 2 days for them to thaw.
We CANCELED our weekend and headed home all the while thinking what hives I can get some brood from so fast.
I finally unloaded 8 so so nucs at 8:00 last night working in 90* temps.
I let them sit over night and added the Queens this morning.

The Queens were still alive but most of the attendants were dead when I opened the if it fits it ships envelope.
I gave each cage a drop of honey and a drop of water 3 times before I went to bed last night and all 8 Queens were still alive.
I hope The Queens are better performers than H T Krantz is.

Sorry for the long rant but they sure messed up a lot of things for me on this order.
Including a unhappy wife.


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## JWPalmer (May 1, 2017)

This is exactly the kind of information that needs to get out. 

If they just completed the first grafts on or around April 19th, one has to wonder how well mated the queens are. Do the bee math.

I used jchitwood's queen calender plugging in 4/19 as the hand graft date. Your queens should still be taking mating flights and the earliest eggs would be 5/15.


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## Hoot Owl Lane Bees (Feb 24, 2012)

Up Date
Chris has replied to me this morning.
The notes about shipping and dates went to my old email that is no longer working at all.
USPS was also 2 days late with the delivery.
Chris has already refunded the shipping cost and is willing to make things GOOD.:thumbsup::applause:

This happened to just be a email mix up, as I had to change addresses after the order was placed.
It could happen to any one.
I have asked about the graft date to have a better idea how old they are.

Jim


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## bk21701 (May 22, 2009)

JWPalmer said:


> This is exactly the kind of information that needs to get out.
> 
> If they just completed the first grafts on or around April 19th, one has to wonder how well mated the queens are. Do the bee math.
> 
> I used jchitwood's queen calender plugging in 4/19 as the hand graft date. Your queens should still be taking mating flights and the earliest eggs would be 5/15.



Queens were not grafted on the 19th. They were hatching out at that time. The queens that went to Mr Evans and everyone that time had laid an entire mating nuc when they were pulled on the morning of May 8th. This entire incident its 100% miscommunication.


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## Spur9 (Sep 13, 2016)

Chris,

If you don't mind me asking, why are your queen prices (per website) around half the price of what other suppliers are listing their queens?


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## gone2seed (Sep 18, 2011)

I'm betting that Spur9's post is going to bring in a lot of orders.


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## bk21701 (May 22, 2009)

Spur9 said:


> Chris,
> 
> If you don't mind me asking, why are your queen prices (per website) around half the price of what other suppliers are listing their queens?


Honestly you should be asking a lot of queen rearers why they doubled their prices over the past few years. I will be at $19 next year because I'm making another 1000 2 sided mating nucs and that is expensive. In many instances people selling them at $30 to $40 are probably reselling queens and not producing them. A queen should not cost $40.00 or anywhere close to it. Most people charging that much are likely not able to make larger quantity of queens so the supply and demand pushes their prices up. I can make 1000 queens every 21 days and next year I should be able to do 2200 every 21 days so I'd rather have a good price and get more queens out than I would only have a few hundred out there are price them high. More queens is more word of mouth. 

I've seen queens from actual breeders average in the $20 to $25 dollar range and I wish it would stick to that and not go up. At some point in time the price of bees and equipment will push people out of beekeeping.


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## bk21701 (May 22, 2009)

gone2seed said:


> I'm betting that Spur9's post is going to bring in a lot of orders.


I'm completely sold out until the end of June unfortunately.


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## clyderoad (Jun 10, 2012)

Hoot Owl Lane Bees said:


> Up Date
> Chris has replied to me this morning.
> The notes about shipping and dates went to my old email that is no longer working at all.
> USPS was also 2 days late with the delivery.
> ...


Un friggin believable! All this and it's your email issue! 
And the knee jerk peanut gallery is fast to chime in too.
Un friggin believable.

Krantz deserves a metal for putting up with this crap.


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## Spur9 (Sep 13, 2016)

Thanks for your explanation. I'll leave the economics of the queen bee market to you guys/gals that live in it. 
You have a cool website. I may end up doing some some vintage honey bottles like you have done (for family and friends). That pic reminds me of a good bottle of bourbon (before I gave it up). 
In the pic of the honey jar/yougurt at the Artifact Coffee House, where did you find that style of jar?


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## bk21701 (May 22, 2009)

Spur9 said:


> Thanks for your explanation. I'll leave the economics of the queen bee market to you guys/gals that live in it.
> You have a cool website. I may end up doing some some vintage honey bottles like you have done (for family and friends). That pic reminds me of a good bottle of bourbon (before I gave it up).
> In the pic of the honey jar/yougurt at the Artifact Coffee House, where did you find that style of jar?


https://www.fillmorecontainer.com/aa12-16c-case12ct-1-12oz.html 


A case of just the jars alone is $6.00 and lids cost me about .25 each.. hell of a good price even if you had them shipped. These globe jars are really popular too.


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## Rader Sidetrack (Nov 30, 2011)

OK, technically, this kind of pricing discussion is inappropriate in this subforum, so please no more. However, in considering the thread as a whole, I'm not going to make any edits to the above.


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## R_V (Aug 20, 2016)

Spur9 said:


> ... cool website...


+1


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## gcolbert (Nov 21, 2017)

OK, H T Krantz may have some issues responding immediately and completely to email. I would imagine that getting hundreds of queens verified and shipped takes a lot of time and is probably not their top priority when working to meet delivery dates. 

My bottom line is that they delivered as advertised and when they committed to it. To me, this is what matters the most. Quality product and delivery date met.

Yes, they could improve their communications, but I would not hesitate to order through them again.

Glen

P.S. I will be ordering all of my queens for next year from them once they open up their site for 2019 orders.


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## JWPalmer (May 1, 2017)

I meant to respond to this post earlier after the truth came out but my knee was still twitching. Jim did the honorable thing by acknowleging that he was the agent of his own communications problem. Chris came through and made it right, even though it was no fault of his. Excellent customer relations management. As for me, garbage in, garbage out. My apologies to Chis and the folks at H T Kranz for suggesting that their quality may have been compromised.


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