Call Kurtis: The Post Office Killed My Bees

Beekeeper Jamie Rossberg rents out hives to farmers to pollinate their crops. To keep her own business buzzing she needed some queen bees. Just as she normally does, she ordered 30 of them to be mailed to her in September of 2009.

"It says on the side of the box, call with my number, we pick them up immediately," says Jamie.

But this time, instead of calling her the mail carrier delivered the 30 queen bees. They were dead on arrival, and she thinks it's because the post office drove them around in a hot postal vehicle.

"So I can't use them and it was almost the end of the season, you can't order any more," says Jamie.

Good thing she bought the postal insurance to cover $330, the full cost of the queens. But in two years, the USPS hasn't paid her claim.

"They don't know how important it was, they don't care. They just brushed us to the side," she says.

"A claim does not take two years to be paid off," says Ralph Petty of the Sacramento Post Office.

He says he doesn't know why Jamie wasn't called to pick up the bees, which is standard for perishable items.

"We have to be conscious that we can't have them sitting in the vehicle all day long," says Petty.

So why didn't they pay the claim? He says there was confusion on the claim form Jamie filled out. Jamie says no one ever told her about that. And she even obtained an internal memo from the post office from last year, where they admitted, they misplaced and mishandled her claim.

After we got involved, the USPS cut her a check for the insurance, plus postage, which adds up to $338.70. But Jamie puts her losses in the thousands, saying without those queen bees, she lost 30 hives.

"So that hurt the business for renting-wise for pollination."

Jamie is now considering her legal options to recoup her lost profits.