Pigeon Mountain Trading Company

Find another place to get your bees and supplies these people are very rude very expensive and don’t care about customer service at all.
I am sorry every time I go in this place, they have lots of supplies their prices are a little high but they are close.
I’m done with them

I am so very disappointed in the lack of character this company displays. I received a gift certificate from my son and due to circumstances in my life was not able to use it before the expiration date. When I tried to contact the company they didn’t return my calls, when I finally got a hold of them they refused to reissue a new one even though Georgia law states a gift certificate cannot expire for five years despite a date written on it. When I told them I would be placing a review online they said, «Go ahead, we’ll just write around it» How sad And deceitful that someone would take a customer’s money and leave them with no product. I have referred many people to them in the past but will now be contacting everyone and telling them to find a more honest and reputable company. I’m not sure how these people sleep at night with their illegal and uncaring work ethic. I will be contacting them again in hopes that they choose to do the lawful and moral thing, otherwise I will be pursuing them through other avenues.

Y’know, I’ve tolerated the lack of customer service skills and sometimes downright rudeness of the staff because this is the only local beekeeping supply company and mail order companies charge an arm and a leg for shipping, but come on, it is getting ridiculous. I waited over a month to get frames, checking back often and kept getting the same answer «we have no bottom bars.» ??? I finally ordered on-​line for in-​store pick up and STILL could not get frames. I FINALLY was able to get pre-​made ones, but the hive I ordered was absolutely terrible. The boards were warped and chipped and one even has a crack all the way across the front! Now they tell me they have no more and would have to order a new one. I am so fed up with Pigeon Mountain. Someone really NEEDS to open a new local store and hire some friendly, competent staff.

I ordered a nuc more than three weeks ago for delivery the first week in June and paid in full. Haven’t heard a thing, and it’s getting late. Beginning to worry about these guys. I will post a follow-​up if they get back to me.
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Update: I finally received my nuc on June 28, 2014, after phone calls and emails, a full month late based on my requested ship date. I do understand that raising bees, providing nucs and queens, etc. is a difficult business and that it is not always possible to deliver on schedule due to the vagaries of mother nature.
The bees arrived in fairly good shape, but there were two problems.
First, there weren’t a lot of bees in the nuc compared with other nucs I have bought. There wasn’t much brood — it was mostly uncapped honey.
Second, the queen was not with the bees as I had expected, as has been the case with other nucs I have ordered from other suppliers. This queen appeared very young and small and was in a queen cage with three or four worker bees. The queen cage is what you normally receive when you order 3 lbs. of bees with a queen, in a small cage with a cork and a sugar candy end.
With a nuc that is much more expensive than just bees there is supposed to be a queen that is acclimated to the worker bees in the nuc and a nuc that has plenty of bees, adequate brood (with eggs and larvae) plus capped and uncapped honey. I did not see any eggs or larva in the frames in the nuc, although it’s possible that I missed them, and there was what looks like brood cells.
Bottom line, though, based on my experience this year with Pigeon Mountain Trading Co. aka Pigeon Mountain Beekeeping, plus their high charges and untimely delivery, I will not use this company again.
Naturally, after being in transit for three days and being banged around a good deal, the bees are pretty agitated, and it’s tough to examine each frame carefully.
Be aware, though, that based on my experience and other reviews on Google, Unilocal and elsewhere, that Pigeon Mountain Trading does not live up to their promises, and they are much more expensive than most other nuc suppliers, especially when you add in the shipping costs and delayed shipping.
I did receive a call from Pigeon a little over a week ago, saying they would ship that day if I responded within a few minutes. I happened to be outside and so missed their call, but returned it probably within 5 to 7 minutes of the call. After several long holds, I was told that, too bad, I was too late returning the call and that they had just shipped all available nucs to other customers and that they «probably» would ship the next week, which they did. at the end of the week.
On the positive side, the US Postal Service did a good job delivering the nuc. The tracking worked well, and my local post office even called me at 6:45 in the morning to alert me that the bees had arrived about an hour earlier and that I could come pick them up even before the post office opened.
Since here in the NC mountains the sourwood nectar flow, our second main flow of the year, is just beginning I am hoping that the bees will be able to get a decent start. I will keep feeding them sugar syrup, and I have put in five already drawn combs from a hive I lost last fall due to a bear, so they should have a head start despite the late arrival.
I am considering lodging a complaint with the George Attorney General’s office of consumer affairs or other appropriate consumer/​agricultural protection office in Georgia against Pigeon Mountain Trading alleging failure to deliver the promised product and failure to deliver in a timely manner.
Based on my experience, I would urge you not to use Pigeon but to use a local supplier in your area if one is available.

Few times do I wish you could give zero stars, but this is one of those times. Ordered a bee suit months ahead of when I was planning to pick up my bees, and was supposed to have received first week of April. Its now June 14^th, and not only have i still not received my suit, but I have three messages unreturned from the manager. Every time i call (five times total) they tell me they are ‘very busy’ with handing out packages and nuts and will have to call me back. (Though from looking at all the reviews on Unilocal and google no one ever seems to actually ever receive their nucs!) A friend who ordered the same suit was told the suits were delayed from China, and then held up in customs. If so, communication of this fact with your customers is a must when you are dealing with something so important in bee keeping. How hard is it to compose a cc email, and shoot it out to everyone who ordered a suit that has been back ordered? Instead I keep getting emails asking me to ‘rate my transaction’? really, Pigeon Mountain? What transaction? The one where you took my money and ran?

Looks like after two years I’m going to get some bees

I ordered two packages of bees in March 2014 and had to cancel the order in April 2014 (bees were supposed to be shipped in May). They charged me a cancelation fee of $ 170 (50% of the order) and would not budge when I told them that it was excessive. In their defense, it was in the small print of their terms which I had clicked to accept, but I still felt they were being unreasonable, since there would be close to zero cost to them and they could resell the packages, given the amount of notice.

This company has poor business practices. I ordered a Nuc of bees from them in early 2013. The package was supposed to arrive the first week of May. When the bees did not arrive I contacted the company and they stated that they were behind and would keep me updated. Well, week after week I had to follow up with them to find out what was going on with my order. Finally I received a shipping confirmation in June 6^th, 2013. The bees did not arrive until 7 days later. Needless to say when the bees arrived they were all dead, including the queen. I requested a refund while standing at the post office describing the rotting mess of bees in front of me, and the representative said absolutely and apologized for all the inconvenience. I have now been told that I will not be receiving a refund it is not their responsibility for the bees to arrive alive. DO NOT ORDER FROM THIS COMPANY! THEIR CUSTOMER SERVICE IS HORRIBLE AND THEY DO NOT STAND BEHIND THEIR PRODUCTS.