For Keith,

I really enjoyed your post the other day and just haven't had time to respond, till now.   It sounds like you do have the program worked out for yourself and those beekeepers like you in the area.   I will, if you email me personally your phone number give you a call as I would like to see your operation and was wondering if I might get a ride in your hummer.   Anyone who is grossing $ 285.00 per hive in my books has to be King of the Hill.   I might be interested in doing an article on you but I am serious about getting to know you and seeing your program.  I tried to email you but [log in to unmask] came back as undeliverable.   Do I have something wrong there?   Anyway, this will be my last post regarding almonds as I think it's been pretty well covered and we know where to go for next year and what needs to be done.  There's alot of good info here on Bee-L and I'm learning alot on the African Genetics right now just listening.
In regard to your last post.  If you think Bob has it all wrong, like he says, just let him know and show him the facts and there's nobody I know who will turn around faster than Bob.  He wants to write the story right and like you said, there's been very little response from California beekpeers and none from brokers, so they are not helping "the truth come foreward".   
You also said on your inspections that there are out of state bees placed with minimal clusters while CA bees are sitting with no place to go at 9 - 10 frames.   This is exactly what the problem is, which is a lack of continuity in the entire process and as a result the system is lacking in fairness to both the beekeepers (in state and out) and to the growers as well.    If I was a grower, I'd be doing just what they are seem to have done this year, which is demand quality.   I can understand  and fully appreciate that.   We even made combinations that reduced our number by a full third before going and left behind many bees that yesterday were 5, 6, and 7 framers now!
There's no doubt the trip is hard on the bees but our point is  1.  There was no notification coming from the Almond growers to my knowledge that everyone was going to be held accountable to a certain level of grading prior to the normal army of trucks arriving from the midwest in the past several weeks.   2.  No standardized format for a grading system was made available to anyone I know in a half a dozen states that I have talked to.   3.  And all appearances of "whining" aside, the remedies upon arrival were so painful that had we known what was going to happen, tens of thousands of out of state bees would never have made the trip!  And lastly, had the information been up front and timely, all of your friends in California would have their 9 - 10 framers placed and pollination prices this year might have hit last minute levels of $ 175.00.
I will state for those I know that even at that price, I could not have made the program work for our operation, knowing that I would have to take another one third reduction upon arrival.   I am grossing less than $ 45.00per production unit, considering both reductions in numbers pre and post-shipment.   Take off $ 10.00 each way for
trucking and then placement fees and plane tickets, rental vehicles and meals and everything else and you tell me how I can sharpen my pencil to draw a profit picture from that, considering future mgmt. costs and damage to 
the bees that did make the trip.  If they were all still sitting here, I'd have my original numbers and be looking
forward to a good honey crop this year to pay the bills.
As I said in my first posting on this service:  " If these are the standards, fine, but we will all have to be wintering in either Texas or California and doing exactly what you describe.   We know what the answers are to raising bees in Nov.-Feb.  and we don't have that part of the equation anywhere here in the Mid-west.   When I have a 10 frame Italian hive here that arrives in the almonds on Feb. 10th with 3 - 6 frames of brood, it is an anomaly.   These units exist but they total around 10 -15 % of total units.    As I said, maybe breeding from this stock for producing is the answer but we may be cutting our throat in other areas.
Your key statement in all of this is that you don't worry about honey production.   That's great if everyone could do that and then just focus on raising bees and treating for mites all year.   NO PROBLEMO! 
We all know that things will change this year and we are spending time here postulating and hypothesizing only because we hope to affect the change positively.  I'll bend to a situation once where I get kicked in the gentles, but it ain't gonna happen again!
Any way, enjoyed your posts and I will look forward to getting with you one day soon and I am sure that we will enjoy each others company.   As I said before, I and I'm sure most of us here in the Mid-west agree with what you have said for the most part.   We're not all characters like Ron White and Jeff Foxworthy discribe from the middle of the country.   We've survived the last decade and the idiots left the dance hours ago.
Thanks again for listening.  Tim Tucker

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