Robin Dartington (or perhaps Christine Gray) said:
> Wm Beasley has to make his choice - 'natural' beekeeping producing
> small harvests of the highest quality or following commercial practice.
About all I could suggest to him would be to use a "tracer dye"
of purple food coloring in his feed, so he can at least see if
individual frames of harvestable honey contain "feed" or not.
Since he is just starting out in spring, he can't draw comb
early unless he happens to have a powerful bloom of a good nectar
source, and pulls the feeder off before the bees are completely done
drawing his supers of foundation. Even then, his first crop might
contain a small amount of "honey from feed". His only high probability
way of avoiding this risk would be to buy some drawn comb from another
beekeeper, and stop feeding well before the bloom. Even then, no
one can make absolute assurances. Bees have a habit of moving honey
and nectar around, seemingly at random.
You can't make the bees do your bidding every time, but
you can at least monitor what they do if you are tricky.
> I get the impression USA producers are more
> in the bulk market
Only the largest are. The majority have as few
or fewer hives than UK hobby beekeepers.
> - with enormous crops to get rid of -
Only about 100 have "enormous" crops.
They don't "get rid of it". They sell it.
It's their livelihood. They are proud
of their crops. Their crops pay the mortgage
and put their kids through college.
> and produce to a lower standard
No Way. No Freakin' Way.
> and get a lower price.
Sadly, yes. More often than anyone would like.
For honey of the highest quality and purity.
Perhaps I should explain my answers. :)
1) I heard from an authoritative source last week that
the current headcount of "really big" US commercial
beekeepers is down to 100, and the total number of
"commercial" and "sideliners" is only about 1000.
So the "majority of US producers" are small hobbyist
operations, no larger than the typical UK hobby beekeeper.
2) Yes, most "big operations" sell their honey in bulk.
3) Yes, most "big operations" harvest enormous crops.
4) But >>>NO<<< there certainly is NOT a "lower standard".
Large producers are held to much HIGHER standards than
any hobbyist would be. Honey bought in bulk is tested
for everything from "color grade", to moisture content,
to parts-per-trillion trace-level miticide residues.
I seriously doubt that more than a tiny number of hobbyist
beekeepers (US, UK, or anywhere) who sell their honey direct
to the consumer could produce honey capable of passing the
tests applied by packers and brokers to the honey sold in
bulk by larger producers. I know that very few hobbyists
even own a refractometer, which would be the most basic tool
to assure quality, at least verifying that the honey will
not ferment in the jar.
5) But, sadly, yes, bulk producers often do get a "lower price",
since the "market price" is pulled down by the availability
of large volumes of honey from places like China, where labor
costs are much lower, and producers are willing to operate at
(or over!) the edge of both regulations and ethics.
Why high quality standards AND low prices? Its obvious when
you ignore the rhetoric of the buyers and look at the actions
of the buyers.
Since the US consumes more honey than it produces, we have an
interesting "double standard", where North American-produced
honey is held to very strict standards, simply so it can be
blended with imported honey, often known by the packer to be
of lower quality in multiple ways, and also known to often
have a "flavor profile", which means it tastes and smells terrible.
So, the brokers and packers demand superior honey from US and
Canadian producers, since it will be required to "mask" the
often inferior honey imported from elsewhere. Why else would a
packer go to the expense and trouble of "blending" honey from
multiple countries? The only possible reason is that if he did
not, his product would be much less attractive to the consumer.
Since the imported honey is always cheaper, why do the packers buy
ANY North American honey? Certainly not out of any philanthropic or
patriotic impulses. They do it because they HAVE TO. Without
North American honey blended in, the imported honey might be
unmarketable as food for human consumption.
And let me take great exception to the implications
made in the statement:
> Wm Beasley has to make his choice - 'natural' beekeeping producing
> small harvests of the highest quality or following commercial practice.
...that "commercial practice" has anything to do with:
a) Feeding syrup to bees in a way that it might end up in honey
(Something that a hobbyist might not even notice, but would
cause a commercial beekeeper's crop to be rejected by every
potential buyer.)
b) "Unnatural" practices
c) Lower quality honey.
"Natural" and "Commercial" are not mutually exclusive. Anything but!
"Natural" beekeeping does not imply anything about the quality of the honey.
"Commercial practice" also says nothing at all about the quality of the honey.
When the "organic standards" are finalized for honey, I expect that the
only beekeepers able to certify their honey as "organic" will be a few
large beekeepers who have apiaries far from any form of civilization
in the area between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains.
All that "commercial" implies is that one is large enough to hire workers,
buy capital equipment, and perhaps even "go migratory", following the
good nectar flows and the good weather. The advantages of economies of
scale allow one to assure that one is producing a better product as a
"free" (or tiny percentage of the gross) byproduct of one's normal
operations, and track actual quality with objective metrics. If I
had to bet who could produce "better" monofloral unblended honey,
I'd bet that the big boys would win every time. I'd also guess
that the commercial producers do not enter hobbyist honey competitions
for the same reason that professional baseball players decline
invitations to play with local softball teams - they don't want
to make a bunch of amateurs feel like... a bunch of amateurs.
The good news for the small beekeepers is that the big beekeeper's
product is, on the whole, blended with imported stuff, filtered to
within an inch of its life, and heated to the point of lowering it
by a color grade or two.
But don't blame a beekeeper for what a packer does to the honey!
If you think about it, NONE of us are really "natural" beekeepers.
We all keep bees that have been hybridized and cross-bred to the
point that they would be unrecognizable to our great-grandparents.
We have long since abandoned "survival of the fittest", and we may
soon face "survival of the fattest". Not the fattest bees, the
fattest wallets able to pay for specialized hybrid bees. "Natural
beekeeping" appears to me to be a codeword for nothing more than a
willingness to let luck and nature have its way with one's colony
count, in hopes of stumbling upon a "survivor colony" from which
to breed one's bees. Good luck to those who are willing to watch
colonies die for a few years every time a new pest comes along.
I'm not willing. I have perhaps 60 more seasons on this planet,
and I hope to hold my losses to a minimum every year.
> People who produce backyard vegetables do not follow the methods of
> prairie farmers. Is backyard beekeeping best seen that way too?
The only practices of large beekeepers that are not appropriate for
small beekeepers are those that require a capital investment beyond
the budget of the small beekeeper. One can learn much from the big
boys, even if you have the luxury of being able to spend a half hour
working a single colony every week when a "big boy" has at most,
10 minutes a month per colony.
And neither vegetables or honey are "better" simply because they
are produced in someone's back yard. Backyard produce may be more
emotionally satisfying to the grower/consumer, but from what I have
seen, "backyard" gardeners irrigate with municipal water, or suburban
wells, and use pesticides without reading the label, all which tend
to contain things that I would rather not have in my food.
"Backyard beekeeping", by definition, often also means "basement
extracting", which, for the most part, means no "quality control"
or "sanitary practices" at all beyond some form of filtering mesh.
I have seen hobbyist "honey processing" under conditions that turned
my stomach, conditions that would make a typical commercial beekeeper
scream in horror. Any of these "backyard practices" would put a
commercial beekeeper into either bankruptcy or jail. Perhaps both.
Why am I being so hard-nosed? Because the commercial guys are
even too nice to even stand up and protect their own image.
No problem - I type faster than they do, and have no qualms
about speaking plainly.
jim (who has too many hives to be a "hobbyist",
but not enough to be a "commercial beekeeper".
Let's just call it a "pathological compulsion".)
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