At 03:34 AM 11/1/2007, you wrote:
>  If you clip the wing, then the hive cannot swarm if that is their "nature" to do so.  I cannot see where this comes into the product being organic.  

Many parts of it I don't agree with, are confusing, vague or contradictory.  
-Queens may be marked apparently, but not clipped.  Apparently for natural queen renewal, not a great way to ensure a 'robust' strain.
-You must requeen often, but only 10% can be from non-organic queens  (never have seen that advertised anywhere, is it different over there?).
-It's ok to immediately convert bees to 'organic' if it's only 10% of your stock.  I can just see a large producer acting as a handler converting packages to organic status, 10% of his hives at a time and then selling them and repeating several times in a season.
-What exactly is 'considerable input of agrochemicals'?  There is no mention of a threshold.
-Your hives become non-organic every time you have a dearth.
-It's ok put your bees on the crops with 'considerable input of agrochemicals', you can't sell honey from it as organic.  But move them a week later to something else and you can sell that honey as organic.
-It's preferable to dump chemicals in the hive instead of drone removal.
-Prophylactic treatments are allowed, just so long as the chemical is natural.
-What exactly does a 1 year conversion time accomplish?  A couple months should be all that is needed to 'renew' the bees themselves.  Contaminates in wax and other parts of the hive won't go anywhere in a year by themselves.
and the list goes on.

-Tim

******************************************************
* Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at:          *
* http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm  *
******************************************************