Products requiring a cold chain must stay cold in transit too. What goes wrong on the way cannot be seen afterwards.

Which products

• Royal jelly: The most sensitive product there is
• Bee bread
• Frozen pollen
• Drone brood homogenate

What the packaging must do

• Insulate: An insulated box or cool box
• Cooling elements: Enough for the whole journey, not just the start
• Airtight around the product: Against condensation moisture and odour uptake
• Sturdy: Glass jars must survive the journey

The invisible problem

If the cold chain breaks, the product looks the same but loses value.

The buyer cannot detect it. This is therefore less a technical question than one of trustworthiness — and with these products that trustworthiness is the actual product.

The chain starts at harvest

With royal jelly, cooling begins at the moment of collection, not on arriving home. A cool box at the apiary is part of the equipment.

A chain that only starts at the refrigerator was already broken before it began.

Shipping to the customer

• Allow generously for transit time; delay is the rule, not the exception
• Do not ship just before a weekend or public holiday
• Mark the package as requiring refrigeration
• Enclose written storage instructions

What to tell the buyer

How to store it, for how long, and that thawing and refreezing is inadvisable. Explaining this is part of the sale; without that information the quality is lost at the customer's end anyway.

Recording

Note harvest date, dispatch date and destination. In the event of a complaint that is the only way to establish where it went wrong.