I believe your request is flawed. You are asking in the wrong place and are unlikely to get any (or many) sensible reponses from a forum such as this.
Right . You are talking 'package' bees and nucs mainly (not many would send full colonies in complete hives!)
You are not really talking 'post' as much as 'carriers'. Colonies are probably not accepted by the Post Office, Royal Mail, or whatever they call themselves.
That might leave Parcelforce and the multitude of carriers in the frame?
You should already know if packaging by the vendors is to a satisfactory standard, or not. Such things as melted wax is either sheer stupidity on the part of the vendor or negligence on the part of the carrier.
This simply boils down to the basic chore of you getting the information you require from the vendors, surely? They will have the statistics of claims they will be making, or have made, to the carrriers.
The un-named supplier (I am assuming I am thinking the same supplier), for instance has already related, in the past and possibly the present, too, an on-going reluctance to use carriers for bee deliveries because of previous problems. So not a current problem there. History. Past experience.
So surely the gain from this forum post is a pittance - you should be asking the suppliers for this sort of information. At least that way the information would not be duplicated.
About twenty replies and zilch so far. I really think you need to bark up other trees, not here. There is a list of suppliers somewhere, I am sure. That would be a far better way to go.
RAB
