At 08:00 PM 2/15/99 -0500, you wrote:
 
 
>The niche market (created and) supplied by Stefan and his fellow organic
>producers of all bee products sets the standard that all our customers would
>like to believe is in the pot on their table.  It also opens up markets for
>other products.  Do the people who complain at the low price they get for
>their honey collect and market their wax, propolis, pollen and venom?  Have
>they tried producing "genuine organic" honey for part of their crop and
>selling it at a price to make a profit?
 
As a beekeeper who sells his own honey, beeswax etc. I have found the
market poor. I have had a few people who were willing to buy a bit of my
honey since they felt "local"  and "raw" honey had some merit. Howerver, I
do not "hype" the virtues of my products beyond taste and food quality. In
general if my prices are too much above the local retail stores, I do not
sell much.
 
Yet at the same time I have been told that as a result of my getting stings
I will be free of cancer! Last year, at my regular job, a older gent and a
lady spent a few hours trying to tell me how much better I would feel and
how I would not get sick if I would only eat a little royal jelly. The
wonders they preached were just beyond belief. Sadly, three weeks later the
gent passed away from aggressive lung cancer (and he was not, to any of his
coworkers knowledge, a smoker). All of the hope he placed in "natural"
cures did him no good.
 
Of course I would like to balance that statement by saying that since he
spent the last bit of his life in a modern hospital, modern science failed
him as well.
 
>It would be a productive step forward if  the interested parties stopped
>knocking each other and agreed on a series of experiments that could be
>divided up and conducted and replicated in the various educational
>establishments that subscribe to this list.
 
The use of "natural" methods can very often be an inexpensive solution to a
problem (I only use 100% organic smoker fuel for example :). I just do not
like the claims that "if its from nature, it must be good" ( I also wonder
when study after study is mentioned, but the reference is never available!)
 
Nature is the enemy. Nature produces the virus, the bacteria, the mites
that kill our bees (and us). Nature has brought more species to extinction
than man has ever seen or heard of. Our fight is against nature, but if we
can get the enemy to give us some quarter every once and a while I am all
for taking what I can get.
 
Anyway I will keep putting grapefruit leaves in my smoker just in case it
does cause mite drop but I will not insist that it is the one and only true
hope for beekeepers the world over! How is that for balance?
 
Al Lipscomb
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