Bob writes
> This article is an example of poor reporting! Written by a reporter without a clue and getting his information from poor sources. Keeps the CCD myth alive!
I see. I grew up in San Diego County and worked selling bee supplies at the Knorr Candle Factory during the 1970s. Almost every one of the people in the article they quoted, I have had many years of personal experience with. Alan Mikolich is a very close friend of mine. I learned more about beekeeping from him than anyone. He was the one I referred to in my previous post today, before I read the article.
Alan used to be Bob von Gunden's foreman, running 2000 colonies for him, and another 1000 on the side. They were hauling bees to the almonds before anyone used forklifts. I am pretty sure Alan took his first load up back in the 1970s when he was still in high school. Bob used to put bees on cotton, when you could make honey off of it, back in the 1950s.
Dave Winter ran bees for James Gibbs (still does, so far as I know). James was one of the most extensive beekeepers I ever met, running around 6000 colonies. He made the biggest crops of anyone in Southern California and I never saw harder workers than him and his crew. They would do almond pollination, make sage honey, and then go down into the Imperial Valley where temperatures stay above 110 F for most of the summer. They would pull alfalfa honey in that heat, haul it back to the coast to extract.
At beekeeper meetings, when James began to speak, the whole room went silent. Time to listen. Might have had something to do with his success with bees or the fact that he gave up a successful career as a scientist when his brother died and left a wife with a bee operation she couldn't run. He was one of the first to notice bees did better on irradiated combs than regular clean comb from the warehouse. He told me himself, back in the 1980s that there were disease organisms in the comb that nobody had identified.
I am also personally acquainted with Dave Farmer and Tom Glenn. The fact that all of these guys are still keeping bees more than 30 years since I met them certainly says something. To get a sense of what is happening on the Southern California bee scene, these are exactly the right people to ask. Oh, yes, and Eric Mussen. He seems to keep up on things. Who should they have talked with instead? Who knows more about Southern California beekeeping than these guys, I wonder?
Pete
***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html
Access BEE-L directly at:
http://community.lsoft.com/scripts/wa-LSOFTDONATIONS.exe?A0=BEE-L
|
