> Let's not attribute all of price delta to the Chinese contamination
> situation... There are also the widespread drought conditions that
> have reduced  harvests...

Good point, Jim.  There are many factors that have pushed the price up,
and it was already trending well upwards when the chlorampenicol find
took honey from China -- one of the largest cheap exporters in the
world -- completely and instantly off the markets, in most of the
world's largest consuming countries.

This sudden supply disruption squeezed those buyers who depended on
Chinese sources, and those who were playing it cool up to that point.  I
think most industry watchers agree that the chloramphenicol find was the
point at which everyone -- buyers and sellers -- decided that the
uptrend was not just a flash in the pan and that higer prices would last
at least a few months, or even a year or two.  Buyers fell all over one
another.

Conveniently also, the chloramphenicol discovery provided a convenient
marker for Chinese honey.  Suddenly those who had been circumventing
duties on Chinese honey, by declaring it to be from elsewhere, were
exposed.  Many buyers suffered a double whammy: large unexpected losses
due to seizures of the cheap honey, when they had been budgeting on
illicit gains.

In some cases, notably in Canada, choramphenicol finds resulted in a
natiional recall of a wide variety of foods made with the contaminated
product.  Increased scrutiny of imports and products on  store shelves
in most develeoped caused packers to become more conscious and
scrupulous about their sources and aware of potential large unexpected
losses if their raw product was questioned.  The honey trade became
riskier, and risk increases price.

That risk will be there for some time.  Maybe it will never go away
again.  I am proposing that we take advantage of that fear by making
sure we do not contaminate our honey -- and that we can document that we
did not -- so that we can cash in on the premium.

>> I guess the Argentine crop is still unknown...  still early for a
>> good estimate....

> I'd say that it is almost no brainier to look at the pretty pictures
> and predict that Argentina's crop is going to be smaller than one
> might expect.

Pehaps, but consider this: at the end of July it was a no-brainer that
Western Canada would not have an average crop this year.

The end of July here is comparable to a week ago in the Southern
Hemisphere.  At that point in 2002, we were facing the 'worse drought of
the century'.  Alfalfa had not been cut and was so dry that the leaves
and flowers fell off.  When the TV camers came to one of my yards, the
grasshoppers flew up in clouds ahead of us as we walked.  A disaster was
declared in Western Canada. Then the Minister of Agriculture announced
(finally) a vist to Alberta see the disaster first hand.

It then began to rain and rained for several days prior to his visit and
during that visit.  At any rate, everything began to grow again, and we
had second growth in most crops.  Some beekeepers still got disaster
yields, but others got a bumper yield in late August and September, a
time when usually our supers are off and the bees are being fed for
winter.   Canola bloomed *everywhere* until the frost.

You are right, though.  Weather observations can spot *probabilities* by
comparing the present to the past.  BUT, as every gambler needs to know,
"The next time is always the first time".

allen
http://www.honeybeeworld.com