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Mailable Live Animals
- ianlevesque 9y agoToo funny. “Via air transportation. Only queen honey bees may be shipped via air transportation. Each queen honeybee shipped via air transportation may be accompanied by up to eight attendant honeybees.” Seems appropriate for the queen.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- DrScump 9y agoBut the attendants get stuck in Coach.
- Etheryte 9y agoPerhaps it's because my family has always been beekeepers, but I don't get the joke? It's just standard procedure to ensure the queen can adapt properly.
- dexterdog 9y agoI thought it was a Game of Thrones reference.
- jameskegel 9y agoPlease, let HN be my one sanctuary where I don't have to see references to this show.
- jnordwick 9y agoHow can the queen stay warm with only 8 servants. USPS should raise the limit. Don't they know winter is coming?
- Sharlin 9y agoIt just sounds funnily anthropomorphic that a queen bee is permitted an entourage, or a royal guard.
- Bartweiss 9y agoOne part that stands out is that "only queens" can be mailed, but attendants are allowed. As I read that, if I for some reason wanted to mail 8 non-queen bees, it would somehow only be legal if I added a queen.
- neuronexmachina 9y agoOther than biological research, I honestly can't think of any reason somebody would want to mail bees without a queen.
- yebyen 9y agoAny legitimate reason maybe... There's an Always Sunny in Philadelphia episode that covers this question, if you've seen it maybe you will remember the big "H" on the box is for "Hornets" so we all know it's a box full of hornets... I mean, you could try mailing someone a box of hornets with a big "H" on it and tell them it's a present and the H stands for "Happy Housewarming," but you were talking about legitimate reasons to mail bees, right?
- IgorPartola 9y agoI would have thought they would require fly attendants.
- arbuge 9y agoDoes anyone at the USPS actually count the number of attendant honeybees to make sure the package is in conformity with regulations?
- riskable 9y ago"I usually look for the ones that stand out... Like if they're wearing red shirts. Those will be removed before the other attendants. I mean, they're just asking for it! No more than 8 allowed per shipment!"
- bitJericho 9y agoThere's an entire section of the post office devoted to verification. I can guarantee you that they are checking this.
- libeclipse 9y agoConsidering how terrible USPS is, why would anyone ever trust them with anything, never mind a live animal.
- mjevans 9y agoDepends entirely on your local area. Hub to hub nearly all services are reliable, it's the 'last mile' service that has such extreme variability from area to area. That's why when I mail a package to someone else I try to ask them about which services are more reliable /in their area/ (since I attempt to drop off at fixed, staffed, locations, USPS offices and the like).
- EADGBE 9y agoYou're a good man (or woman). I wish more shippers were like you. I'm a frantic wreck when I order a guitar; never knowing what condition it might show up in at the mercy of the shipper.
- nxc18 9y agoIn my experience, USPS has been at least as reliable as FedEx and UPS. I've had more issues with those two (late shipments, delivery to wrong address, losing things in the mail) than I've had with USPS. I've also been impressed with their physical locations. The workers are attentive and helpful (I don't mail letters very often; they have the answers to my many questions). This has been contrary to the stereotype of the post office being similar to the DMV.
- hak8or 9y agoIt depends greatly on your location. Mine is very bad, I've lost maybe 10 packages over the past few years or so. Thankfully Amazon has been kind, but I worry I may eventually raise a flag there, even though I tell them constantly my local usps is trash. The people in my post office are extremely rude and about as "I don't care" or "not my problem" as you can imagine. To be fair, I've also seen some extremely rude customers in the past too. From what I see, they are also very understaffed and probably under paid, but then again they have godly benefits and job security.
- omarforgotpwd 9y agoFor those who don't know, it's common (and essential) to ship honeybees around the country to where they're needed. Honeybees are shipped around different parts of the country all the time depending on the season and what kind of agriculture needs to be produced. There was a Planet Money episode on it I think... yup, here it is: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/02/24/517076055/episode-756-the-bees-go-to-california http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/02/24/517076055/episo...
- xyzzyz 9y agoThese aren't usually mailed via USPS. USPS is frequently used to mail nucs, that is, hive starters.
- omarforgotpwd 9y agoYes, but I thought it was worth mentioning for people who might not be able to imagine why anyone would seriously want to mail bees in the first place.
- dfc 9y agoThe commenter is saying that is not why you would mail bees and therefore not worth mentioning. They then give a useful example of what is mailed for the benefit of those who couldn't imagine why you would mail bees.
- dawnerd 9y agoOne of the seasons of Outback Truckers show some guys transporting live hives around to various locations for a season. They have to be fast so the hives don't come alive and leave.
- Wingman4l7 9y agoProbably misremembering, or it was simple TV hyperbole; it's fairly easy to seal up a hive for transportation so that the bees cannot get out. Hives do "swarm" though -- basically, vacating their box en masse -- so it's possible that they were referring to avoiding this behavior, which could maybe be induced by having a hive box sealed up for too long.
- cbonsig 9y agoTimely. Today is the last day it is permissible to mail not-more-than-24-hour-old pheasants, until April 1 2018.
- pvdebbe 9y agoPets Over Night dot com!
- jamespetercook 9y agoGTA radio was hilarious!
- marricks 9y agoAll kind of horrifying... lizards specifically can die if it gets cold enough. I have a couple bearded dragons thinking of someone just shipping them, taking it to chance they don't get too cold and get sick, scared and alone is just a sad sad sad thought.
- asddddd 9y agoYeah, stuff goes wrong in shipping, particularly since it seems most people have a vague idea that packages just teleport to the destination. When it gets cold, this means issues like exploding wine bottles and frozen tropical fish.
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- fapjacks 9y agoUSPS is great for destroying both packages and the vague idea that packages just teleport to their destination.
- ceejayoz 9y agoIt's fascinating to me how disparate experiences are with the USPS. I've probably received hundreds of packages from Amazon via USPS, plus years worth of mail, with maybe one or two incidents of minor damage to the packages. I wonder if anyone has done research into whether this is region-specific. Maybe certain processing facilities are older or have problematic management?
- VLM 9y agoIts at least nationwide. Three hundred million happy people, a handful of unhappy people, we will read endlessly online about how awful the service is. Online review sites suffer from the same effect. See also the safety of jetliner travel.
- 1024core 9y agoI remember one late night I was at a large USPS center for work, and there were a bunch of packages sitting nearby. I was talking to the USPS official about the work that needed to be done, and suddenly... one of the packages moved! I nearly jumped out of my skin and told him that the package moved! He was very calm, and said "yep, those are geese". And then proceeded to tell me all the different types of animals (and bees) they routinely ship.
- danek 9y agoImagine receiving a box of live scorpions by accident.
- detritus 9y agoHonestly, I'd more fear opening a box of pissed-off geese.
- fhood 9y agoYeah, well Geese don't look like crabs designed by satan.
- westbywest 9y agoThey'd definitely cause more damage, however.
- djrogers 9y agoA box full of scorpion sized geese would be kinda cute, however a goose sized scorpion would pretty much be the worst of all scenarios.
- SAI_Peregrinus 9y agoNaw, a goose sized-scorpion would probably collapse under its own weight. Exoskeletons just don't work for large animals. Respiration would also fail, as would the open circulatory system they have. The square-cube law is quite unforgiving of arbitrarily scaling animals.
- bunkydoo 9y agoI worked at a rural post office for a little over a year, sometimes we'd get chicks going out to the farms - other times it was insects. Pretty impressive the scope of services offered by the postal service
- carlob 9y agoI'm very surprised lobsters and other shellfish don't make the cut…
- underbluewaters 9y agoThere's a queen bee farm (right term?) in my neighborhood. One time I walked into the post office and as soon as I open the door I hear a roar of buzzzzz... There was at least a full pallet of flat-rate boxes of bees.
- Wingman4l7 9y agoYes, beekeepers will routinely replace their queens with fresh ones, although queens can last several years. The "farm" in your neighborhood was probably someone breeding queens for sale, which are shipped in a small box with a few worker bees. It could also have been someone selling "nucs" (nucleus colonies) -- basically, starter hives -- although these packages would have been substantially larger.
- homero 9y agoI've ordered frogs in the mail before, still have them
- IndrekR 9y agoMy father is a beekeeper. Once we were transporting honeybees. Queen honeybees are often delivered with mail for breeding and other purposed. Well they got stuck in the customs for few days without any reasonable explanation at first. Then got an invoice for unpaid alcohol tax ... turned out that someone had written "Caution! Live Beer" instead of "Live Bees" at some point, almost killing the queens.
- saagarjha 9y agoYou’re lucky you didn’t have to pay the dead beer tax on that one.
- throwaway613834 9y agoDid the bees get not X-ray'd or anything? I'm surprised you said "almost killing".
- afandian 9y agoQueens are shipped with a certain amount of food, but a delay in shipping means it could run out.
- throwaway613834 9y agoI meant just dying because of getting tumbled and X-ray'd, not due to lack of food, but good to know, thanks.
- danek 9y agoI am trying to imagaine what the customs agent thinks "live beer" is, since apparently it is something you can import as long as you pay the tax.
- AlgorithmicTime 9y agoBeer with live yeast still suspended in it, rather than filtered out.
- mobilefriendly 9y agoThe USPS has been handling poultry for probably as long as it has existed. (I received live birds in the mail just last week!) There is a special vented and reinforced mailer that is used. Newly hatched birds have nutritional energy reserves and don't need food or drink for a couple days. The biggest issue is temperature, even in summer. Hatchlings usually have a mother to warm them to 95 degrees. So most shipments have 15 or more birds so they can keep each other warm. Some farms even throw in an extra "warmer" bird on a order. I've received many shipments and never had a dead bird.
- sabujp 9y agoTIL you can mail live scorpions around the US. https://pe.usps.com/text/pub52/pub52c5_008.htm#ep184083 https://pe.usps.com/text/pub52/pub52c5_008.htm#ep184083
- LogicX 9y agoBuddy of mine started a whole business around the rules regarsing shipping live frogs. Even wrote a book about his adventures: http://www.onemillionfrogs.com/ http://www.onemillionfrogs.com/
- lima 9y agoNot a fan of their product though - two live frogs in a tiny plastic box. Seems a bit cruel.
- Mysterix 9y agoSo you can't send a cat https://xkcd.com/325/ https://xkcd.com/325/
- kbutler 9y agoBecause the USPS wouldn't be sure if it were alive or dead...
- theandrewbailey 9y agoDarn. I have this cat I want to mail to Abu Dhabi.
- dfc 9y agoIt's a terrible joke, but I think it's was supposed to be cute because bees fly so ground transportation wouldn't work. I think HN has been deteriorating lately because of comments lame jokes. There are a bunch in this story.
- TimTheTinker 9y agoI thought there was also a chuckle there about the queen bee having "attendants" accompanying her, like in stories about human queens.
- dfc 9y agoDifferences in what is funny is why I think jokes just don't work well on discussion forums. I assume that this is the reason they are called attendants. Things that seem to follow logically are not comical to me.
- Stratoscope 9y agoThe term "attendants" didn't come from anyone joking around in this thread. The linked USPS information page uses the word because it's what beekeepers call them: > Monday morning myth: attendants must be removed from queen cages > Many beekeepers believe that you must remove attendant bees from queen shipping cages before you introduce a caged queen into a hive. They believe the queen will more likely be killed by the receiving hive if both the attendants and the queen have a foreign odor. > This simply is not true. If you install the caged queen properly, the attendants will cause no problem. Before long the queen’s pheromone will circulate throughout the hive. All the bees—as well as the attendants—will then smell the same. https://honeybeesuite.com/monday-morning-myth-attendants-must-be-removed/ https://honeybeesuite.com/monday-morning-myth-attendants-mus...
- arghwhat 9y agoNo matter the forum, there will always be someone who doesn't understand the joke. That's not going to stop the rest of us from being entertained, however.
- 9y ago
- dsfyu404ed 9y agoWearing a beekeepers suit and driving a car with boxes of beehives in the back seat makes traffic law about as applicable to you as it is to cops. Don't ask me how I know.
- tryingagainbro 9y agoAren't they sealed with a window (wire mesh) providing just enough air to breath?
- bitwize 9y agoI'm not going to sleep tonight, knowing that our mail might have live scorpions in it.
- nl 9y agoRelated: A Brief History of Children Sent Through the Mail In the early days of the parcel post, some parents took advantage of the mail in unexpected ways http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/brief-history-children-sent-through-mail-180959372/ http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/brief-history-child...
- Ophelias_Rue 9y agoThank you for that story, always fascinating to read about the genesis of institutions and their early days.
- ginko 9y agoI'm surprised you're allowed to mail scorpions but apparently not spiders?
- bbarn 9y agoSpiders aren't prohibited. I used to mail tarantulas back and forth with breeders and dealers frequently when I kept them.
- lightbyte 9y agoI was surprised to see they did not list tarantulas, I've bought many that were shipped via USPS and I imagine they actually ship more of them than scorpions.
- jnordwick 9y agoNeither are trouser snakes but apparently other snakes are okay.
- pbhjpbhj 9y agoFWIW Dave Gorman's comedy show "Modern life is goodish" has an episode (S3.E4) about sending bees through the UK postal service.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- thebiglebrewski 9y agoSorry to be a downer but...what does this have to do with Hacker News, exactly?
- kiernanmcgowan 9y agoFwiw, bees are sold by the pound. I'm just waiting for the day when I can order 20lbs of bees on amazon prime... but shipped to my office.
- zimpenfish 9y agoI'm waiting for the day when I can order 20lbs of killer bees on Amazon Prime ... but shipped to someone else's office.
- jnordwick 9y agoJust waiting for somebody to start a campaign to get everybody to ship bees and scorpions to their favorite Congress critter.
- ikeboy 9y agoDon't know about bees but there's https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00533KOIC https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00533KOIC, or https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00I0ZXU18/ https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00I0ZXU18/ for a prime option
- tjr 9y agoOld, but I still find it amusing: http://www.improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume6/v6i4/postal-6-4.html http://www.improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume6/v6i4/po...
- ada1981 9y agoPossible way for the fed to save taxpayer money on domestic travel by utilizing the USPS: "Small, Harmless, Cold–Blooded Animals"
- btilly 9y agoIt turns out that you're allowed to mail ants, but not ant queens. That is because it is generally illegal to ship ant queens across state lines. (Ants are very good at becoming invasive species.) This is why if you buy an ant farm for your kids, the ants you get will always die out. :-( (My son loooves ants.)
- pavel_lishin 9y agoSurely there are companies out there that use local ants, and only ship locally? (Something something organic free-range...)
- btilly 9y agoYou can't ship the queens. You have to meet in person. Your best bet is http://www.antscanada.com/queen-ants-for-sale/ http://www.antscanada.com/queen-ants-for-sale/
- lafay 9y agoWhen USPS first launched Parcel Post in 1913, people would "mail" their kids to relatives. No joke: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2017/05/24/mail-that-baby-a-brief-history-of-kids-sent-through-the-u-s-postal-service/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2017/05/24...
- nickzafo 9y agoI ship roaches on a regular basis through USPS. Good thing they accept them because UPS and Fedex label them as "pest" insects. They're just misunderstood. I label the box as "Live Insects" as a precaution which leads to me having to explain why I'm shipping them. Always gets some smiles and funny comments at the post office!
- GLenH 9y agoMy wife (who teaches at a university, not to be named here) once had flesh-eating beetles FedEx'ed to her lab in order to clean skeletons for student use. Unfortunately the box had a hole punched in it sometime during transport, and the FedEx guy literally ran into her office, threw the box, with beetles coming out of it, on her desk and ran back out.
- pavel_lishin 9y agoI feel like the FedEx guy actually went above and beyond here.
- gertef 9y agoor and created a hugely unsafe situation by not destroying the corrupted mailer.
- tenken 9y agoMeh. I was a Fedex Ground truck loader for 2 summers. When the box of Crickets en route to a petstore has a tear in the container and crickets are wandering all over the bed of the truck and boxes -- it's gross.
- 5trokerac3 9y agoI'm going to start CluckBox, a service to have a live chicken delivered to your doorstep every month.