Front-yard Beekeeping (as opposed to Backyard or Side-lot?)

Although Robin’s long-winded points are sometimes interesting, others
benumbing, yet done in good faith, I find many of his fine points
unrealistic:

1. How can one insists on natural beekeeping [What is “natural,” putting
the bees back into the gum?], while using Apistan, whose chemical
components could be far worse than any sugar-contamination—not that I
promote sugar feeding.  IPM is not natural, either.  Demaree, never (why
harass bees with so much *unnatural* human intervention?)  In fact,
Demaree method strikes me as a psycho-beekeeper-harassment method. Again,
the damnable word “natural” means a lot of different stuff to different
people, naturally.

2. There is a honey-hungry market in the US and maybe in UK, as well, the
*demo stench* if you will, that would readily wolf down lower-quality
honey without such discrimination one might find among ultra-sophisticated
and refined British aristocrats.  Following the logic of the argument in
your post then [small production], the honey crop will suffer, creating
even a bigger market for Chinese and Argentine honey, already flooding the
market to quench the thirst with undiscriminating taste buds.  Hence, the
argument against mass production appears myopic.

3. The argument assumes that the more one blends honey with other honey,
the level of contamination will be lowered.  Maybe, but the same process
suffers the very quality you are speaking of.  The more you blend, the
more floral fragrance—the idiosyncratic property of honey that makes it so
unique locally—will also disappear, to say the obvious.  Worse, imagine
how long that multi-blended honey must sit in a capacity settling
tank/drums before a packer shows up and buys it and then blends it even
more and sits it longer to improve it with the Chinese import.  There are
hundreds of them in store shelves.  They all look so cute and clear with
no content of distinguishing character.

4. To certain extent the overall point in your post is that we go back to
primitive, prior-to-industrialization beekeeping practice.  To wax Tom
Paine’s famous analogy [against British colonization earlier], since milk
was the best food for babies should grown-ups suck our mother’s breast
still?  The thought of going back is not necessarily good.  In fact,
the “natural way” as you describe goes against your very own
*evolutionary* point of view: in nature an organism strives to exploit its
resources maximum possible—despite constantly changing/challenging
ontological circumstances.  So must beekeeping.  When feeding syrup, we
are not taking about deliberately diluting honey to fool the customers.
When talking about pure honey, we are not talking about one part-in-
trillion-perfect purity.  We are merely talking about conscientious
beekeeping practice, a practice that will produce good honey, good enough
for the beekeeper to put on his table and share with others and sell the
surplus.   Let us distinguish what is ideal and real.


FWIW

Yoon

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