Goeff maybe knowingly or maybe not has entered into a very complicated
subject.

> In bees, the thing that ultimately matters is honey production.  Luckily 
> it
> is easily measured and a price put on it.

I might add profitable pollination.  These two ( plus things like nucs,
brood & queens) are the priorities.
Pay the bills and support the enterprise.

Moving on:

>How do you measure and put a price on disease or parasite resistance?  We
>will no doubt agree that these resistances are of value ,but at what
>levels.

Excellent point Geoff!

At what point is say the loss of productivity worth disease or parasite
resistance?

10% /20% /30%

 At what point do you gamble on *claims* of disease or parasite resistance.
How many hives do you gamble?

complicated subject and one Bell and I have covered over several days
conversation more than once.

Those pushing the latest fad disease resistant bee we find are pushing a bee
which is not as suitable as the bees we were using as the research has been
concentrated on the bees resistance to said disease or parasite  with in 
most instances a
loss of some of the traits we love about the bees we were using before. I
see tradeoffs.

At what point is the price worth the disease resistance? the parasite
resistance?

 At what point is the resistant bee worth the loss of what pays the bills?

the risk?

The mentality of many (not all for sure) hobby ( those not keeping bees for
a living) is to save every hive at whatever the cost.


commercial beekeeping can be summed  in general terms as :

"expansion following contraction and  contraction following expansion"

Hive numbers are always changing and controlled by the smart commercial 
beekeeper.


bob

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