On Sun, 11 Feb 2007 07:51:52 -0500, Bill Truesdell <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>Your main point was your local honey. But you bring up honey, some of
>which does demand high price since it is "rare" but certainly is not
>collected by bees in Minnesota we do get exercise kicking it.)


It was? Please reread my posts. I was defending the ability of ANY beekeeper to charge the market 
price for organic or other raw varietal honey. In many large cities around the world including the 
USA there is a vibrant market for this kind of honey. 

You and Mr. Fisher then tried to broadbrush all honey as being the same which is hogwash. 

Unlike the artisan cheese or wine industry the U.S. bee/honey industry appears to be full of 
stubborn and or ignorant types who persist in the notion that anything expensive is a rip off.  

This high end market for honey is riding the wave of interest in natural and organic food. For 
those who don't care fine, for the rest of us we are tring to move beyond the ubiquitous honey 
bear and find a way to make a living off from several hundred colonies. 

This model is the opposite of the approach deeply ingrained in the US bee industry which is the 
IMO stale and financially unattractive game of producing commodity-like honey. 

I might add that the model I am advocating allows for proper management of colonies not 
conveyor belt beekeeping that relies on massive numbers of hives and on a variety of questionable 
ethics and/or inputs .

As many have noted our industry is in trouble, why not look at a new way of doing things that is 
more sustainable for our bees and for our company ledger? I don't understand the fierce 
resistance to this concept on this board.   

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