Yes, the "Gold Rush" is over. That's a good thing for responsible beekeeping, and a very bad thing for the wallets of the carpetbaggers and charlatans, which is ANOTHER good thing for responsible beekeeping. We can go back to viewing stubbornly-ignorant wannabees as a self-correcting problem. Ditto for the "Anti-Vaxxer" approaches to beekeeping, where the actual "husbandry" is removed from "Animal Husbandry" on claimed "ethical" grounds, but actually because it would be more work than "trying to re-route course of evolution, two dead hives at a time". When the Gold Rush was on, we had no choice, we had to teach basic skills to any/all who walked in the door. It was an act of self-defense to protect the hives that were already in place. Like my hives. My little white boxes of calm in the midst of a city gone stark raving mad. My wife's hives, too, which make her happy, which makes me happy. I kept needing a bigger venue for the "Absolutely Free Beekeeping Course". We maxed out in a Parks Department art gallery into which we could jam 150 seats, and I still had people standing in the back. Is my Powerpoint-Fu that strong? Maybe. Are my talks that funny? Yes...NO OF COURSE NOT! What happened was that bees became irresistible to precisely the demographic most likely to buy into the nonsense peddled by the crystals and incense crowd. And if you taught a beekeeping class, you could actually SMELL it. I had to open windows in the depths of winter to ventilate the gallery, as the combination of objectionable body odor and Patchouli oil made me struggle to breathe. The good news is that most of these types have given up on bees, and moved on to macramé or craft beer brewing. As for animals, they all went back to "saving the whales", which these days, entails NOT saving any whales at all, at least not at places large enough to give them a home, Like SeaWorld. Now that they have made Orcas seem abused, and those who love them, abusers, they are moving on to making Belugas look like prisoners of war. The current wannabees are orders of magnitude less self-absorbed, as beekeeping is no longer trendy. The burst of popularity in beekeeping has left beekeeping a LOT less white, a LOT less male, and a LOT younger. That's a good thing. Old widower beekeepers have plenty of help these days, and some of them have "harems" of young ladies that they are "mentoring". (Yep, "mentoring" - that's his story, and he is sticking to it.) My current line is something along the lines of "No, don't buy bees - send an email to our mailing list, and find someone who lives near you who you can assist for a season before you decide if you want to become responsible for the welfare 80,000 of God's creatures, and strictly liable for the acts of the roughly 60,000 of them who can sting your neighbors." I explain that beekeeping has very low "barriers to entry", but incredibly high "barriers to success", and a "sunk capital cost" of about $500 over year one, with a resale value of about zero, due to a lack of demand for used gear. (Yeah, I taught 'em well.) Oh yeah... the carpetbaggers and charlatans? They are now trying to sell "apprenticeships" as they cannot even justify renting a room to offer classes, but as there is now a community of experienced peers keeping bees in the city, they are debunked at every turn, reviled and shunned. Their reputations now precede them, even among the press, who no longer feel obligated to do stories "on the bees". 'Cept for a few... I was interviewed by a young man from the Financial Times, who thought it would be nice to do a story on the "business" of keeping bees in the City. He was serious. I had to wave my hand around at the gym, the pool, and the rooftop sundeck high above the City where we sat, and asked "Do you honestly think that HONEY could buy an apartment here in any quantity smaller than tens of metric tons per year? "So, you don't make any money?" he asked. "Sure, we ALL make money" I said. "But it is BEER money, not MORTGAGE money." Thus the interview ended. *********************************************** The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html