James Fisher wrote:
> sit down and talk with anyone who has been in the business "pre varroa", and ask them if their current financials are "healthy" or "a death spiral" by comparison.

OK. Here's one:

Bees became the spokes-animals of the Sierra Club Canada’s cause, said Lee Townsend, a commercial beekeeper at TPLR Honey Farms in Stony Plain, Alberta.

“They’ve been working a while trying to ban these products,” Townsend said. “First they tried to use butterflies and frogs.”

In 2013, the European Food Safety Authority claimed honey bees were being threatened by exposure to the pesticides, also known as “neonics,” via dust that is sent into the air during the planting of a crop, the complaint says.

“When they saw the dust issues… they latched right onto that topic and used the bee industry as their cause to have these products banned,” Townsend said.

“I have a fine understanding of what they’re doing. But it’s not accurate.”

In fact, Townsend said the amount of colonies on his farms has more than doubled in the last eight years – from 1,500 in 2006 to 3,100 this year.

Townsend said a better solution would be education. Of those beekeepers who are complaining, he says, “I wouldn’t call them exactly great beekeepers.”

“Many are small in size or hobbyists,” he continued. “It’s easier to blame a chemical than to explain the unknown, in their mind.”

A four-year program that began in 2006, he said, helped after substantial winter losses.

“This industry, while not perfect and the challenges before it, is thriving,” he said. “It’s bigger than it’s ever been. So where’s the crisis?”

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