Bee Folks:

Obviously some of the members on this List do recall that I am not, and 
have never claimed to be, a “purist” in beekeeping despite my long-
standing commitment to keep bees via “apis-centric” view, the kind of 
sustainable beekeeping that always puts bees and their natural 
predisposition and interests ahead of my interests, in general, and money 
and profit-making and greed, in particular.  Please note that I am not 
attacking any one particular person here [no ad homoniem please]; rather, 
I am arguing against certain kind of beekeeping practice, the philosophy 
often mistakenly considered as main-stream around here.

To a commercial beekeeper, religiously mindful of the bottom line, annual 
requeening makes sense, for nothing beats the young queen’s vigor in egg-
laying, a long-standing practice that totally ignores the well-received 
dicta among us that “beekeeping is local.”  (One should, in my book, never 
lip-service this phrase if he/she requeens annually)  For example, despite 
their explosive spring buildup and despite all the merits one must bestow 
on Carniolan bees in the north, they don’t do well in Oklahoma simply 
because 1) it is just too hot around here, 2) there are too many Italian 
bees to maintain a solid lineage, and 3) they shut down too quickly in 
July to take advantage of the ensuing fall foraging.

Certainly, I too would like to maximize my profit by keeping bees 
via “profit [greed]-centric” beekeeping philosophy, the kind of practice 
best illustrated by a massive annual re-queening of hundreds of colonies 
with queens bred thousands of miles away, the sort of expandable queens 
that one can launder its generic and other strength in one season. And no 
more.  Yet at the same time, practitioners of this profit-centric 
beekeeping have the gall to tell me what to do and how to medicate, etc, 
uninvited—-when in fact I may not need any medication at all, I do not 
operate under greed-centric beekeeping paradigm, and I refuse to requeen 
with Wal-Mart type, generic queens manufactured specifically for 
California climate, Georgia conditions, or Hawaiian weather, for last time 
I checked I still live in the People’s Republic of Oklahoma whose weather 
and local conditions are idiosyncratic.  Even if one requeens annually, an 
experienced bee-hand will note that not all these queens perform uniformly 
well.  Not all the imported queens thrive in spite of all the rhetoric—
that they were rigorously selected  (commercial-grade) and disease-
resistant with proven productivity under a razzle-dazzle insemination and 
drone control—-just as not all swarm-capture colonies exhibit the 
propensity to swarm.

My long-standing experience with feral bees (Bill, by “feral bees” I 
mean “the unkept colonies of wild bees that have survived the mites, and 
now CCD, thriving in areas where there had been no known beekeeper in the 
vicinity for decades) attests that they are resilient, and among them one 
can find excellent producers, given chance.  Look at the size of their 
swarm!  When was the last time you found a seven-deep-framer?  (You must 
welcome them by housing them in two deeps of drawn combs to start with, 
for they came out of God’s hidden closet!)

Since I am sticking my neck out here, let me say for the record that 
migratory beekeeping works against beekeeping in the long run.  It simply 
is unnatural to stack up hundreds of hives in one locale.  When was the 
last time you saw such congestion in nature?  The situation is not 
convergent evolution, either.  Almond pollination squarely puts greed 
ahead of the bees and I am not even talking about how migratory bees will 
accelerate disease propagation along the Interstate.  Even if a bee-
research project gets funded, I often wonder, “So, what’s in it for 
me?”  “Why should I call anyone to help these guys’ bottom dollars?” For 
creating and giving me CCD?  Name one legislative action that helped in 
the past a hobbyist or a sideliner although we are often lumped together 
for the benefit of a handful, treating us like expandable queens that have 
been sucked dry.  When these folks fatten their pockets, why is it that we 
never hear from them?  What have they done for the little guys?  Nada 
absolutamente.  

Old ways of beekeeping mean dead bees and CCD’s.  In new beekeeping, old 
experience is worthless, for that experience was based on old variables, 
long dead and buried in the dust bowl.  It totally ignores that we live in 
a world that changes constantly: impermanance is the only permanance.  
Thanks for the opinions.  Opinions are not facts.  Facts are not the 
truth.  

Garbage in, garbage out.

Yoon
YSK HONEY FARM
Shawnee, OK

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