Weald Farm Orders

[Cazza]

I've ordered loads of stuff from them and never had any problems

Ditto
Cazza

 

[jimbeekeeper]

I have had great service from WFP.

Like most things it is supply and demand and on and off seasons.

Try and plan ahead and order in the off season, and therefore don't expect instant service when they are busy.

 

[Stiffy]

to be fair i have had more problems with Th**ns that WPF. I placed an order with Th**ns7 weeks ago for foundation, white queen marker and press in cage.

Took them 4 weeks to ship the order, and they ignored 6 of my emails. Then when the order gets here its short of the press in queen cage.

So i have to wait another 4 weeks for them to ship the part they missed out! Total time 8 weeks for a simple order.

Then i bought the bees on a budget bee hive and it came with a plastic QE one of the harmless ones not the orange ones. Which was not letting the bees up to the super. So far they have ignored me for 3 weeks on the subject and 3 emails ignored.

Th**ns have to got have the worst customer service i have ever come across and i wont be using them again!

I think you must be the unluckiest person around as I would say that the majority have had a positive experience dealing with Thornes. In fact I have had a pretty good experience from all bar one supplier, no guessing who the bad experience was!!!

One thing that I had noticed is that a complaint on this forum gets a fairly quick response from WPF. Its a pity they dont just answer emails and the phone instead of following the forum complaints.

S

 

[thurrock bees]

I have had great service from WFP.

Like most things it is supply and demand and on and off seasons.

Try and plan ahead and order in the off season, and therefore don't expect instant service when they are busy.

i ordered the queen on the 2nd jan this year.

 

[jimbeekeeper]

i ordered the queen on the 2nd jan this year.

The guy struggled with some poly nucs...what hope is there with a queen.

Apart from that I am pleased with what I got

 

[OXFORDBEE]

I would have thought an early January order would have been fulfilled by now. However, The BeeBase Import Reports shows only 100 queens imported from Argentina so far this year.

 

[Rotor1947]

I am going to post our experiences with this 'business' as a salutory warning to others.

We thought we would give a new guy a chance. We spoke to William last November and he said the right things and so, foolishly, we ordered a colony of bees. What we actually wanted was an overwintered nuc with a British Queen.

From the beginning of April, we started to email without success. We even confronted him at Stoneleigh where he was having a wonderful time, didn't really want to talk to us but airily promised we would be called during the next week to ten days to collect our bees. So from the beginning of May, we again emailed - no answer, and phoned - or tried to. When we did manage to get hold of him, we had about 5 different stories, which included 'the bees will be ready in a week to ten days' - again. By the end of May, we were getting seriously annoyed and started to ring on a daily basis. He clearly hadn't a clue who we were or anything about our order - but was very superior with us telling us that he has 'hundreds of orders' and essentially couldn't be expected to remember them all. But he finally agreed we could pick our bees up this weekend. We rang him, as agreed, last Thursday to confirm that we would be collecting the bees and arrived, last night, at 6.30 as agreed.

Have you been to the farm? It is chaotic. There are sheds full of old equipment tossed around, piles of boxes and old frames and dirty foundation lying around - through which bees are foraging. In my opinion, probably a breeding ground for disease and I am wondering what the Bee Inspector makes of it all.

No William. His mother, who admitted she is far from a beekeeper, told us that he had gone to a party and had obviously forgotten us. She was clearly mortified and angry with him and told us that he has a real problem separating his business and social life. This was obviously not the first time that this has happened.

He had told us that he was teaching a weekend course yesterday and today - I find it very worrying that he is doing so if this is the case and I really do wonder how much this man actually does know about bees. I think he is a good talker - but as for actual knowledge .... make your own minds up.

We felt desperately sorry for his poor mother who seemed a very nice woman. She had William on the phone and he airily told my husband that there would be no problems at all - easy in fact. So we lit the smoker for Mum (who couldn't) and then trailed around a scruffy orchard whilst she tried to find some bees for us. The first colony was in a poor state with dirty old frames and foundation, no sign of a Queen and little brood. We said we were leaving, but William was back on the phone sending us off to another location. My husband is kinder than I, because I was all for walking and suing if necessary. But we ended up in a field of stinging nettles, with Mum talking to William on the phone and finally jamming some frames into a travel box (not the poly nuc we were promised - because Mum said they don't actually have any). The light was poor, but we did see we were getting some brood and the Queen - but the whole thing looked a complete mess. Mum insisted William came home to speak to us - he very obviously didn't want to. She did tell us we had a brand new Slovenian Queen. She also said that they had had an experienced beekeeper who was now ill (was he the guy with the knowledge?) and that their bee suppliers had let them down badly - they were apparently planning to buy bees from Yorkshire and from Portugal. I am left wondering how they were/are planning to make any sort of profit if all they are doing is a sort of 'bee brokering'.

When William arrived, he was full of excuses including being let down by his suppliers, the bees and the world in general - he sounded like a petulant child and insisted that none of it was his fault. He apologised but very perfunctorily we we were given the sense that it was all our fault for not being sympathetic to his difficulties. We told him how upset we were and particularly emphasised the lack of communication. Apparently, according to William, we are the only people who have slipped through the net communication wise because he insisted he spend all his time phoning people and replying to emails. It was profoundly clear that he still didn't have a clue who we were or what we had actually ordered. He was waving around a list of orders - although he couldn't seem to find us on it - and there certainly were not hundreds of them. It is very obvious that if you make a fuss and turn up, you might get bees. But they are probably a quick colony, thrown together and certainly not established or checked. There seems to be no system or order - as I said before, the whole set up appears to be chaotic in the extreme. And that is nothing to do with financial backing and everything to do with beekeeping knowledge and business acumen.

We pointed out that we had ordered a British Queen and William offered to rush off to the field and get us one - it would only 'take a minute'. We didn't actually trust what we would get and just wanted to get away, as soon as possible, from that scruffy and dispirited place. We had the sense that an almighty family row was brewing! Mum promised that if anything went wrong, they would replace the Queen with a British one. We will not hold our breath.

We drove home in fear and trepidation really wishing that we had left the bees and WPFB behind us and cut our losses - with absolutely no idea what we did actually have in the box behind us.

Genuinely worried about disease, we have quarantined the bees at some inconvenience to ourselves and this morning transferred them into a hive and gave them a very thorough check. To our surprise and some considerable relief, they seem healthy and even reasonably quiet, but, of course, it is very early days yet.

I have a feeling that some sort of general warning needs to be put out and I am wondering what action could be taken - I see he has taken a full page ad in Beecraft which makes the operation look slick and professional. I suppose the market will eventually sort things out and I very much doubt that he will stay in business much longer. But with the huge influx of inexperienced and and new beekeepers coming along, I have real concerns about how many more people will get caught up with this man before it all comes to a messy and horrible end!

It's his mum I feel sorry for.

 

[BKF Admin]

Rotor I am sorry to hear you had problems.
I notice your location is Hants so expect you are not that far from me.
I have sold out of nucs for this year many months back but having read your story and the distance you had to travel I could of sold you one of my nucs from my own stocks If I had known.

 

[nelletap]

I think you have taken the time to write an informative picture for everyone else and seem to have been very fair and calm in your presentation of the facts and I for one am grateful someone has taken the time to do this. Sounds a classic case of an entrepreneur with a little too much enthusiasm and optimismnot balanced by the necessary rigour and routine of breeding and communication. I hope that either his beekeeper/manager regains health (though this chaotic admin must be stressful for him) or perhaps a bee inspector or experienced beekeeper can somehow work with him so that his vision can be implemented and his optimism given a good dose of knowledge and good practise. Otherwise, there could be even more problems waiting in the wings in the form of disease. And I hope his poor Mum does not have to pick up more of the mess.
Tricia

 

[MuswellMetro]

I think you have taken the time to write an informative picture for everyone else and seem to have been very fair and calm in your presentation of the facts and I for one am grateful someone has taken the time to do this. Sounds a classic case of an entrepreneur with a little too much enthusiasm and optimismnot balanced by the necessary rigour and routine of breeding and communication. I hope that either his beekeeper/manager regains health (though this chaotic admin must be stressful for him) or perhaps a bee inspector or experienced beekeeper can somehow work with him so that his vision can be implemented and his optimism given a good dose of knowledge and good practise. Otherwise, there could be even more problems waiting in the wings in the form of disease. And I hope his poor Mum does not have to pick up more of the mess.
Tricia

He had an experienced Essex Beekeeper who is very good beekeeper advising him at Stoneleigh on his stand ( i assume the "Eye Candy Girls" on his stand had nothing to do with Bees )

I would have thought the adviser would have brought the dangers of such Apiary chaos to Mr W Alldis's attention, I know the local BKA and a few members from adjacent Hertfordshire have raised other concerns with his adviser ,

I have never visited Mr W Alldis's Farm but with AFB reported this May in Enfield within 10 miles of WPF, if it is a chaotic as Rotor says then we could be heading for another Wallingford disaster

But unlike wallingdord will WPF have enough guilt to buy the complainers off by donating large sums of money to Honeybee research

 

[psafloyd]

Rotor,

I would have demanded some recompense for all the crap he put you through.

I was hoping things would settle down and would have used him as he is local.

I dont mind people being disorganised, but I demand minimum levels of customer service and he has fallen far, far short.

I'm going to have to hear a lot of awfully positive reports on the coming months before I would consider using this company.

If I practised these levels of communication and service, I would be mortified. I wouldn't sleep at night.

 

[jallen]

amen to that my order was aparently miss layed and ended up with a swarm in a nuc rather then an over wintered nuc but did get the packaged bees lol and yes it is chaos there

 

[Rotor1947]

Thanks for your support everyone. We feel really quite dispirited today - we've always found beekeepers and suppliers, in general, a really nice, friendly bunch and I think this is the worst experience we have had.

But aside from the appalling customer care (or lack of) - it's the disease aspect that really concerns me. The rest of us (I hope) are meticulous with our hive hygiene and really work hard to keep disease at bay - keeping good records and focusing on the welfare and well being of our bees. Poor Mum (not her fault, she isn't a beekeeper) toddled round from hive to hive with a pair of ancient leather gloves, rummaging around and carrying goodness alone knows what with her. I just hope our bees haven't got it! But until we know for sure - they are staying away from our apiary.

My husband and I are beekeepers for pleasure and not profit - but we really enjoy and care for our bees and it has been a deeply unpleasant experience visiting WPFB. And as I said before, if he is really teaching new beekeepers - what on earth are they learning!

Admin - thanks for the offer - the colony was originally intended as a gift for a new beekeeping son - but we couldn't find anyone with Langstroths for sale in Hampshire when we were looking to place the order.

 

[jallen]

Hello, Just wanted to let you all know we had had a very similar experience with William at Weald Farm Bee's. The man is extremely difficult to get hold of, via email or phone. His excuse was that his emails were down and not to contact him via the website, we resorted to phoning him at less obvious times of the day, i.e. in the evening and with-holding our number. He came up with reasons for not contacting us, such as he had never received our order, had not received our payment... all of which we were able to prove by sending him copies back..(he had actually confirmed our order by email) He told us that he was having big problems with his supplier in Portugal who had badly let him down and that he would be looking at two options 1) contacting Trading Standards 2) or sending a big bloke over to Portugal to sort it out...... he also told us that he had two thousand orders of bee's that he was waiting on.

We had ordered an over-wintered nuc - but was actually given a freshly captured swarm and and a packaged bees. We ended up making two journeys to the farm as the entire order was not ready - despite his promises.

When we finally pinned him down to a day, we turned up at the farm and found a sign on the 'farm shop' door which said please shout over the garden gate for help. We shouted and a lady and a little girl came to the gate, there in the garden were approximately 10 lots of packaged bees. The lady produced a hand written list of names, ticked our name off the list, took our money and did not give us any kind of receipt. We left the place feeling that this was a very un-professional set up and did not inspire us with confidence in the quality of bee's we had just purchased.

Basically we would not recommend Weald Farm Bees.

 

[TOBY-3652]

Reading all this about these orders im very supprised no ones give him a black eye ???

 

[Rotor1947]

Probably worse things in the world than a black eye Toby, my husband is emailing the Bee Inspector as we speak! The mention of AFB less than 10 miles away from WPFB has really focused our minds!

 

[MuswellMetro]

..... he also told us that he had two thousand orders of bee's that he was waiting on.


Basically we would not recommend Weald Farm Bees.

different tale was given to one of our beginners who has ordered a May Nuc which that was he was waiting for 5000 made up Frames to arrive before he could spilt broods boxes into for Nucs

needless to say, nothing has been heard as to when the Nuc will be ready

i think he has oversold wintering Nucs or lost too many

 

[wightbees]

well with 10,296 views to this topic and not much in the way of appraisal.
If it was my business i would be very worried right now!

 

[Rotor1947]

Interesting comment about the 500 made up frames. That costs doesn't it? And he wasn't one of the people staggering away from the Thornes' stand at Stoneleigh with a sack barrow full of cheap frames as you might have expected from a new start up. Actually, from the state of the frames our bees have come on (we will be getting the bees off them and burning them as soon as we can), plus what we saw in the sheds and around the place, my guess is that he has bought in an old job lot of equipment from an auction. And I go back to my concerns about disease ........!

 

[OXFORDBEE]

From: http://www.wealdplacefarmbees.co.uk/product-details.php?pid=12

Quantity available for B S National 6 Frame Nuc Colony delivery Mid June to July = 500

He's got a lot available....