Bee-L

Bob is right in that all commercial outfits are based on the bottom dollar,
never the long-term welfare of the bees.  When a beekeeper pimps his bees
from yard to yard, from one corner of the continent to another overnight,
for a myopic and immediate gain in his pocket, as one must make profit and
more profit and yet more, one becomes a slave to his blinding greed, having
forgotten the larger picture of the system we are in, the self-sustaining
system on which life depends.   

This type of beekeeping, the culmination of the Cartesian linear way of
looking at things, under the pretext of biblical stewardship, is not
sustainable, for such practice, though profitable and seemingly ingenious
and immediate, cannot be said as pro-bee operation, much less a natural or
sustainable business model: this is a “pro-fit: operation in that anything
“fits” goes, a duct tape and baling wire operation.  There is no true
commitment (practice what one preaches) to save bees for the long haul when
the very livelihood of the keeper depends on it.  No commercial outfit can
or will ever undergo not extracting honey a year, for instance.  Worse, no
outfit will get off the treadmill of medicating for a season.  For these
outfits to chime in as to how they too are truly committed to the long-term
welfare of the bees is an oxymoron.  Yet they constantly demand better bees,
not for the bees’ longevity but for the profit, while laughing at the small
beekeepers committed to the welfare of this magnificent insect, the marvel
of natural engineering.

Hobbyists and some sideliners can and have stopped taking honey.  Many of
them have stopped medicating their bees entirely because they simply refuse
to live in an environment where bees must be kept in an intensive care unit
in a nursing home, this large bubble ready to pop, where tubes and wires are
just barely sustaining their meager existence through judicious IPM
strategies throughout the year.  About ten years ago, as many on the list
still might remember, I insisted we stop medicating the bees for mites so
that the bees themselves, under duress, come up with their own survival
strategies.  They did.  Some then called my let-die paradigm a “purist”
agenda; I got flack from many a spit-fighter in the air.  Many on the list
were shocked at my naiveté.  But look around now.  Many beekeepers in all
walks of life, small or large in colony numbers, have finally recognized
what was happening to our bees and how sick our environment has become.  I
thank them, I respect them, and I admire their courage of breaking the law,
the conventional wisdom, and the advice of their ill-informed “mentors.”

The only thing permanent in nature is the change itself, as Greeks knew it.
 To survive one must take off one’s old habit and change into a new one. 
That takes a good measure of character and insight and intellect.  I have
known Allen and Peter long enough to be able to say that they too have
modified and changed their stance over the years.  Read the archive.  They
too were the champions of commercial beekeeping; they too were the
mouthpiece for the industrial and scientific beekeeping that allows
migratory beekeeping as Peter still does to some extent.  Yet they have now
become pro-bee thinkers, having transformed themselves from their old
clothes.  They went beyond "we agree to disagree" lipservice.

Even if I have found an ideal stock that survives most of the bee pathogens,
including AFB, what makes you think I would share it with anyone, in general
and a commercial outfit, in particular?  The commercial outfit wants the
best stock from the researchers only to launder its potential in
unsustainable pimping of midnight bees; it sucks blood not only from the
scientific community but from the bees themselves, giving little thought to
the long-term welfare of the bees and the ecology.  Such operation is
parasitic, for it focuses only on here-and-right-now-profit.  Bess are not a
rusty bolt one can replace every year.  They are not built like a John Deere
2440; even JD will go defunct one day.  They are breathing organism like you
and me, ultra sensitive to external stimuli of all sorts.

I would not share my bees with anyone pimping and laundering bees in such
business model for the simple reason that I refuse to invest the first rate
resource in a second rate experiment, looking for the first rate outcome (my
definition of an idiot).  No bee will thrive, much less survive, the
gauntlet of pimping in today’s environment; the external variables, such as
AFB and SHB and CCD, and all the rest, are not the same as ten years ago. 
Wake up and smell the white tea.

Now the golden rule has been that you do whatever is necessary to eliminate
the AFB infected bees and the equipment, this law has been in practice for
ages, and now is the time to reconsider other options, including the option
of having bees that are resistant to AFB’s.  (All American forefathers
violated the king’s  “law”)  It took nearly fifteen years for the bees to
find an ecological equilibrium against the mites.  Given the longevity of
AFB spores, it might take much much longer for the bees to evolve.  But we
have been robbing the bees of such opportunity.  How in the world could they
develop such resistance when the bright beekeeper robs them of such chance
with all the snake oils in the trade?

Yes, the above practice was the result of then scientific community.  But
science too must change over the years.  Here is an example.  In the advent
of AHB’s, nearly all the scientists pointed out how the defensiveness of
Africanized bees will be dominant since the gentleness of European bees is
recessive.  But, so far, not a single incident of unprovoked AHB attack has
been reported in my area although we have AHB hybrids (confirmed through
DNA) since 2003.  Why is it so?  Indeed, “Nothing that is so is so” to wax
Bill (Shakespeare)’s rhetoric.  A while back there was a talk about how
scientists were trying to come up with a resistant stock so that they could
release them into the wild.  Although one can accelerate the process of such
creation, I tend to think that nature has been at it all along.  Thanks but
no thanks.  Besides, how can one create a resistant stock out of dead or
dying bees, to begin with?

Left alone, bees have been doing all that by themselves for eons.  Let them
bee.  Do you suppose they will go extinct if we don’t treat? Hardly.  They
will thrive.  Indeed, the highway to that warm place is paved with favors,
favors mostly unwanted, uninvited, and unforgiving.

Yoon

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