Hello All

We recently talked on the Irish List about impending changes in EU
legislation requiring beekeepers to observe a strict code of practice in
the purity of beeswax used for making cosmetic products.

The recent exchanges on this subject make for gloomy reading. I know of
some beekeepers in Ireland who are making a tidy sum from selling these
products and fair play to them. But they must now be wondering when the
inspector cometh.

But when I think of the EU and Ireland authorising Bayvarol and then
turning around and telling us that our wax is polluted, then this
Irishman's blood begins to boil.

It appears to me that we are slowly but inexorably sleep walking our way
into a horribly polluted world and beekeeping is slowly but surely going
down the tubes.

And the entire scene is being assisted by the failure of organisations like
FIBKA (The Federation of Irish Beekeeping Associations) who are doing
nothing about it, except covering their legal asses, as they did recently
at the AGM of the Galtee Bee Breeders. Granted some of the FIBKA personnel
are putting together a grand show for Apimondia 2005 in Dublin, but when
all of the glitz and the razamatazz is over, and everybody has thanked
everybody else, and the delegates have returned to their own countries full
of the joys of an Irish visit, we will still be slowly sleep walking like
zombies towards a beekeeping scenario full of pollution as they have in the
USA.

And the tragedy is that it could be different in Ireland at least, if FIBKA
led rather than followed.

But I suppose that you cannot teach dinosaurs of any age new tricks. Maybe
that is why we no longer have dinosaurs in the wild!

Sincerely

Tom Barrett

Dublin
Ireland

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