The following changes to shipping will be effective January 1, 2022.
Covid has hit every industry in the world. This is especially true of the lumber industry where prices for lumber have gone up 100% since Covid was released. This means commercial grade lumber we used to pay $2.00 per foot, now costs nearly $4.00 per foot. The same is true of the select grade lumber, which is even more expensive. It takes about 6 linear feet of lumber to make a hive box. This means our cost alone on a commercial grade box is $12.00 per box not including labor to mill it and shipping to get it to us from the mill. Hyperinflation caused by the widescale printing of money has caused gasoline to nearly double in price, food has gone up over 20%, most goods like shoes or anything else you can think of are up over 20%. Car rentals are up 50%, etc. The shipping industry, which relies heavilly on fuel has also gone up drastically. Covid and poor financial decisions to print money and increase our countries debt by double has caused a huge surge in the cost of everything we depend on. It does not take a rocket scientist to know that if you print money, it devalues the pool it goes into. It seriously is as simple as eco 101 class.
These changes only effect customers who spend $175 or more, as customers who paid less than that did not meet the requirements for free shipping anyway and have always had to pay for shipping when ordering from us.
We have tried to keep prices for our products fairly stable over the last 18 months. We have tried to keep our customers in mind by doing this and allowing you to shop with us without breaking the bank. Unfortunately, if we continue to absorb these costs ourselves, we will be unable to stay in business.
So, effective January 1st 2022 we will no longer offer free shipping on our website. We will however drop prices for all products by about 10%. In doing the math, this is going to save our customers the most money and still allow us to keep our doors open. As an example, if customer John buys $300 in beekeeping supplies we would normally have shipped this for free. Under the new system that same customer will pay about $270 for the same products, plus about $40 in shipping. This results in the order costing the customer $310 to have it on their doorstep. Do not forget though that you earn reward points on that same order as well. that order would generate 9 Funny Buck$ which would futher offset the price as those Funny Buck$ can be used for discounts on any future order.
If and when the inflation caused by our terrible fiscal leadership ever gets back to normal, we will reduce prices as much as we can.
Thank you everyone for your continued business and support in these unparalleled times.