As far as commercial beekeepers knowing what is actually going on, I have
looked at many commercial operations and they are a mixed bag as far as
experience and quality of their hives.

Boy, that's the truth. They range all the way from the operators being top flight biologists, to the outfits where the owner at the bar and the hired hands don't speak ten words of English. 

I have met good beekeepers whose equipment looks like they inherited it from Gramps, and poor beekeepers with thousands of dollars worth of new equipment stocked with more mites than bees.

PLB

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