> Anyone who establishes a colony of bees within 
> 5 miles of another beekeeper is in competition 
> with his neighbors for resources

False.

For the results of 17 years of study of a "worst-case" so-called
"competitive" scenario between "Africanized" and native bees, see:
http://www.stri.si.edu/sites/publications/PDFs/STRI-W_Roubik_2009_The_effect
_of_the_bees.pdf
http://tinyurl.com/zom6s9a

Plain-English summary of the above:
http://smithsonianscience.si.edu/2009/10/native-bees-prove-resilient-in-batt
le-for-food-with-african-honeybees/
http://tinyurl.com/z7wbs7e

TL;DR: The obvious effect of more bees is more pollination, and hence more
propagation of the best of the forage plants, creating a rising tide that
lifts all boats.  As the paper points out, the larger number of forage
plants created by the aggressive pollination of the Africanized bees may
have actually "saved" some of the marginal species of bees from population
losses due to habitat loss caused by global warming impacts.

> and the genetics, pathogens, and parasites in his/her 
> colonies have the potential to affect all surrounding colonies.  

We may not be our "Brother's Keeper" per Genesis 4:9, but like it or not, we
are our "Brother's Beekeeper". Worse yet, the least-managed hives have
"pathogen/pest leverage", magnifying their impact on well-managed
neighboring hives.

> And if that beekeeper sells honey, wax, or bees to
> others, then that beekeeper is a business competitor 
> to all other beekeepers who have a financial interest in beekeeping.

False.

Demand consistently outstrips supply, and no matter how much US-produced
products of the hive are produced, they are a "drop in the bucket" as
compared to US imports.  The price of honey is a global price at all but the
smallest scales of production. 

Here in the US, much of our "grocery-store honey" is from Canada, while in
Canada, much of their "grocery-store honey" is from Argentina, as each
country's exporters, importers and packers find the sweet spot in the
scatter diagram of price paid versus shipping costs.  With the price of oil
going down again, those sweet spots move, and allow imports to go further.
To add insult to injury, the 15 largest ships that carry all that
unregulated "World Trade" pollute just as much as all the autos in the world
combined.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/apr/09/shipping-pollution
http://tinyurl.com/o9w2tpr

http://www.princeton.edu/~ota/disk3/1975/7508/750803.PDF
http://tinyurl.com/j8xaymp

I taught several hundred people (for free) who are still keeping bees in
NYC, and none of us has ever had any problem selling our entire crop at any
price we care to name.  While some of the more trendy "purveyors of fine
comestibles" in Brooklyn became deluged with offers of local honey, it did
not take long for even the Brooklyn hipsters to figure out that a dollar is
a dollar, and the cachet of exclusivity of a high-end health food store did
not sell honey (in fact, that darned "Agave Nectar", indistinguishable from
HFCS in both processing and health impact, is what sells more than honey to
that demographic).  The local greengrocer / bodega closest to one's hive is
where the price can be maximized, as "local" has become very personal, a
matter of hundreds of feet rather than thousands of yards.

What everyone "competes with" is the illegally-dumped imports and false-flag
diverted imports from low-wage/zero-regulation countries
(*cough*Asia*cough*), which drive down prices for bulk commodity honey,
prompting the smart the US producers to go "boutique" and "niche". 

In fact, the imported "hive products", such as the so-called "Chinese royal
jelly" that caught Aaron's interest are consistently shown to be fraudulent
analogs of their natural namesakes.  It isn't the low wages as much as the
lack of ethics that allows these exporters to remain profitable at such low
prices. (See, for example Wytrychowski M, Daniele G & Casabianca H. 2012.
"Combination of sugar analysis and stable isotope ratio mass spectrometry to
detect the use of artificial sugars in royal jelly production". Analytical
and Bioanalytical Chemistry 403(5):1451-1456., where isotope ratio mass
spectrometry easily detected 13C/12C differences, and showed cane sugar
hatch-cycle carbon isotope ratios rather than legitimate nectar-plant carbon
isotope ratios.)

Worse yet, much "royal jelly" is manufactured from milk powder and mixed
starches, and has nothing to do with bees. Hydrolysis of the starch makes
dextrin (a sugar), which is said by savvy buyers to be detected with iodine,
which turns the dextrin purple. Legit royal jelly is turned yellow or orange
by iodine.  A little sodium hydroxide is also useful, in that it will
separate out the solids in pure royal jelly, but faked milk-based mixes will
not separate.  This wisdom was passed on to me in the Royal Orchid Lounge at
Hong Kong airport by a fellow who noticed my Brian Sherriff bee tie, and
spent his layover time talking with me about bees and his bee products
export/import business, where suspicion of the mainland is a finely-honed
skill.

So, wear a bee tie when flying, and investigate which airport lounges your
frequent-flyer status, airline code-sharing agreements, credit cards, and
spare change allow you to access.  

It's another way we can "educate ourselves".  :)

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