At 09:41 AM 4/1/98 -0500, you wrote:
 
>Regarding the queries about Graham Pyke and assertions that (and I
>paraphrase here) honeybees do not compete with native species, I draw
>subscribers' attention to the previously discussed book
 
>_The_Forgotten_Pollinators_ by Stephen L. Buchmann and Gary Paul Nabhan
>(Island Press - ISBN 1-55963-352-2) in which there is a lengthy
>discussion of this issue.
 
Hi Arron & Bee Friends.
 
First I believe that honeybees do compete with other species of insects and
in fact come out on the short end in numerous times such as when the insect
has better equipment for getting at the nectar or pollen.
 
In some cases such as with the Blue Curl plant other numerous insect
species get first shot as the early bloom is seldom attractive to honeybees
other then for pollen and this is the time that dozens of others run out
their short live cycle and work the blue curl for their own sugary food.
Many plants are this way and one only has to know the frustration of having
honeybees ready to do the job and fields of flowers only to watch as days
or weeks go by before they seem to find the source. Nature seems to have
provided for every other little creature before our honeybees get a whack
at it.
 
It is well to remember that most other species of pollinators as good as
they may be have a much limited useful life cycle then honeybees have which
we can be extended to year around by movement of them. Some of these so
called farmers friends such as the blue orchard bee do not normally come
out of their sleep early enough to pollinate early season crops such as
almonds but this does not keep their proponuts from saying different. The
worst of these so called scientific reports come out of one little USDA lab
in Utah that never has put out a report on their study interests without
putting down honeybees which is not in their area of expertise or have
anything to do with their so called scientific research.
 
As for Dr. Nabham ideas, having met him personally several times in the
past and enjoying his book "The Desert Smells Like Rain" it is still my
opinion that he is not qualified to do more then utter opinion on honeybees
with the same value as most others looking for a cause to follow and I
don't agree with what I have read from him when it comes to honeybees and
would suggest that some environmental writers tend to follow the smell of
money. He may have degrees in ethnobiology and plant ecology but lacks much
when it comes to even a basic understanding of what beekeepers and
beekeeping is about.
 
In my opinion he as an author is typical of so many other authors who get
lucky with their first book and try to capitalize on that moment of fame by
doing more as in this latest attempt, he is way out of his depth and off my
reading list for now.
 
ttul, the OLd Drone