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Wed, 19 Nov 2008 17:51:22 -0500 |
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One of the oldest moral codes in farming is 'do no harm to your
neighbour'. That means you don't do things like throw rocks gathered from
your fields across the fence into your neighbour's fields. And you don't
let your fields grow up in weeds that then invade your neighbour's
property.
I feel our modern migratory beekeeping system tends to break this code by
spreading pests and diseases. We rationalize doing so by arguing that this
is the only practical way to feed the world. But as others have pointed
out, it is a style of beekeeping that is dependent on science to
continually throw us chemical life lines to avoid collapse.
The growers that finance this system are also very dependent on science to
fend off collapse. Because they have planted huge monocultures, their
crops are very susceptiable to evolving pests and parasites. But, so far,
so good. And after all, ancient Egyptians floated hives up and down the
Nile and packed them around on donkeys without any problems, which is such
a close parallel to today's situation that we should be good.
But don't you find it a little screwy that a beekeeper with 300 hives who
carefully avoids developing resistant varroa by alternating his mite
treatments, is considered an impractical dreamer? And that our industry
leaders are those who are totally dependendent on science to come up with
the next new mite strip?
The big weakness in our current system is that if science can't come up
with the next big cure, then we all go down the tubes, because thanks to
migration and world trade, we've now all got the same disease profile in
our hives. If science fails us and things do collapse maybe we should
consider going back to a policy of 'do no harm to your neighbour'.
Ted
Thinking: some of these arguments are harming my brain.
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