Bob said: >>> If I were to guess I would say Mr.. Michael Pollan has read one of >>> my five articles on the Australian bee import... And Bob added: >> Michael Pollan might understand things better if he spoke >> with an informed beekeeper. Please explain in more detail. Brian said: > problem is Bob some folks like you don't like the answers. No one likes "answers" that do nothing but wander around seeking problems to which they can attach themselves. Everyone and his 2nd cousin has been trying to hitch the wagon of their own agendas to the well-publicized problems that bees and beekeepers have been having. We covered it all in detail last spring, here: http://listserv.albany.edu:8080/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0707B&L=BEE-L&D=0&I=-3& P=70 Brain said: > I and other like minds can only hope that these systems > break down from the fact that they are unsustainable. Well, there's an interesting thing to hope for. Nothing less than a complete demolition of the most productive methods of agriculture ever developed by man, to create one you'd call "sustainable". The result would be, what, exactly? One could call it a form a genocide, in that the first food not shipped would be the multi-ton foreign aid and emergency aid shipments that the US sends so many places so often. The "problems" of beekeeping have little or nothing to do with the "sustainability", or lack thereof in agriculture as a whole. Our problems are the direct result of exotic invasive pests and pathogens that would have stayed on the other side of the planet if not for all this newfangled "world trade" that goes on without anything more than grudging lip service to the issue of "biosecurity". No other live creature crosses international borders without specific tests, screening, and sampling to protect biosecurity and animal health, so why are bees an exception to these rules? > you seem more interested in importing bees then fixing > the problems we created as an industry. Neither approach would have a positive effect, as neither approach has anything to do with the actual causes of "the industry's problems". IMPORTING BEES Bob's support for importing bees from the other side of the planet, and his open opposition to any sort of disease and pest sampling/inspection at port of entry ( see http://bee-quick.com/reprints/beepocalypse.pdf ) does seem like less of a "solution" to a problem, and much more like the best possible way to bring yet even MORE pests and diseases from the other side of the planet here. And this movement of additional pathogens may be happening as I type. Diana Cox-Foster's presentation at the recent Entomological Society of America meeting indicated that the Australian bee imports may not be "off the hook" after all. Something about different strains of IAPV, and multiple introductions of IAPV over time. (Anyone have a recording or transcript?) So Bob's approach is much like calling upon Mothra to protect Tokyo from Godzilla, and we all know how that worked out for Tokyo. Double the buildings got knocked down. (See "Mothra vs. Godzilla", 1964 and/or "Godzilla vs. Mothra", 1992). FARM "SUSTAINABLY" But the claim that anything would be "fixed" by dragging all of agriculture to the granola-and-Birkenstock fantasy of small-scale, organic, so-called "sustainable" operations is to propose something much, much more dangerous. There is a technical term to describe such agriculture - it is called "subsistence farming", and it is massively wasteful of scarce resources like water, and produces, at best, only enough food to feed the farmer's family. In anything less than a "good year", people starve, and die in large numbers. When Sally Struthers appears on TV commercials asking us to Save The Children, she is asking us to help feed the children of "subsistence farmers". We can afford to feed them with ease precisely because we abandoned subsistence farming several centuries ago. Lucky for us, science ignores the neo-luddites who have never missed a meal in their lives, and does things like come up with rice that needs less water, and can feed more people with less resource consumption: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070910173802.htm Now that's sustainability! > stop planting massive monoculture crops which require > pollination services that do not exist. Funny, I haven't seen any crops going unpollinated, so I'd submit that not only do the services exist, but that they are still such a bargain that growers have not even tried moving the function in-house. Even at prices over $100 per hive, pollination is one of the cheapest inputs a grower can deploy, per ton of crop produced. Dollar for dollar, pollination is "almost free" to the grower at current prices. > people are and will be asking is that honey from china or a > migratory operation? no thanks I'll get the non-industrial, > more sustainable version from a local beekeeper. No one buying honey has ever asked that sophisticated a question. What they ask about all food are questions like: "Is it local food?" "If not, why not?" That's a good question to ask, as it should be obvious that consumers want Country Of Origin Labeling on all food, including honey, and would prefer to buy food produced as close as possible to home rather than from far far away. That's a good thing. But the massively misinformed idea that "migratory beekeeping" is anything new, or puts some new "stress" on the bees is laughable in the extreme, given that migratory beekeeping has been around since at least 3,000 BC or so. Back then, they were moving hives around on donkeys. Anyone who has ever tried to ride a donkey can confirm that this would be several orders of magnitude more "stress" than the modern approach of lifting pallets smoothly with Swingers onto flatbeds with air-ride shock absorbers, which drive on nice smooth interstates fast enough to provide a cool breeze to the hives. An entertaining story can be found in the collection of papers called "The Bureaucracy of Ptolemaic Egypt" (found at Columbia U, copies elsewhere), where a group of beekeepers petition a local official for the return of their donkeys, conscripted for some unnamed public works project. They point out that they had loaned their donkeys for 10 days, and 18 days had passed without their return. The growers were waiting impatiently for the beekeepers to move their hives, as the growers wanted to burn the weeds and brush and then flood the fields. The farmers were hinting that they would set the fires by some deadline, hives moved or not, so the beekeepers pointed out that their loss of hives would reduce the taxes that could be paid to the king. Sound familiar? Growers anxious to do their pest control and fertilization, wanting the hives out NOW. Beekeepers forced to beg for even minimal attention from the government. Some things never change. :) The only reason researchers have been saying that beekeepers should "reduce stress", was that they didn't have any better advice, and are fumbling for something, anything to say in response to the question "what can beekeepers do about CCD?". They certainly did not want to admit the unvarnished truth, which is that "All we can do here is watch hives die". ("Saving Private Ryan", 1998) Bob said: > Those beekeepers on here from another forum know I have been > asking all beekeepers to contact me if having problems. I have > spoke with around 10 beekeepers which have attended their state > meetings and few if any problems. We've been over this before. Beekeepers are reluctant to tell another beekeeper their actual problems. The folks doing the actual research don't seem to be having any problem getting "fresh samples", if that's any help in grasping the current scope/extent of the issue. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ******************************************************