All good, but I would highly suggest one more item: a top 10 list of must-have basic requirements for beekeeping. The generic statement cautioning that beekeeping is not easy will register with only some people, those who read instructions before doing anything. Vast majority of people will skim and go forward anyway.

Example: supposed that I was interested in having a horse as a hobby. I read your statement and I say to myself that I’ll certainly read up on horses after one is delivered to my home. But if besides your statement that was a list of things that I absolutely have to have, hm, perhaps I wouldn’t rush into it. What is it about space that horses need, oh and does it really needs to be fenced? I have an invisible fence for my dog, shouldn’t that be enough? They eat *how* much food a day?! And seriously, no animal can drink *that* much water! I need to register with a veterinarian? Why?! And aren’t farriers things that only people in Iceland believe in?!

I think you get my drift. I actually invested an hour of my time a few years back to compose a long email reply to a former colleague of mine who has asked me about getting a hive, so that her daughter “could learn more about nature”. Knowing how disorganized and absent-minded this person was, I was doing everyone a favor by successfully weaning her off of that idea. In the end, it was the dollar expense that turned out to be a key point for this person - she couldn’t believe that a simple hive wasn’t costing $19.99 to be bought on Amazon or other online sites. Sigh…

Przemek

> On Apr 15, 2017, at 7:41 PM, Peter Armitage <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 
> Our BEEK association gets a lot of inquiries from folks interested in beekeeping. It's usually not clear how much homework they've done re. beekeeping. We have published the following caution on our website.  Given your experience with start-ups, is this alarmist, inaccurate, unreasonable?  Would appreciate your feedback.  

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