Yes, the "Gold Rush" is over.  That's a good thing for responsible
beekeeping, and a very bad thing for the wallets of the carpetbaggers and
charlatans, which is ANOTHER good thing for responsible beekeeping.

We can go back to viewing stubbornly-ignorant wannabees as a self-correcting
problem.  Ditto for the "Anti-Vaxxer" approaches to beekeeping, where the
actual "husbandry" is removed from "Animal Husbandry" on claimed "ethical"
grounds, but actually because it would be more work than "trying to re-route
course of evolution, two dead hives at a time".

When the Gold Rush was on, we had no choice, we had to teach basic skills to
any/all who walked in the door. It was an act of self-defense to protect the
hives that were already in place.  Like my hives.  My little white boxes of
calm in the midst of a city gone stark raving mad.  My wife's hives, too,
which make her happy, which makes me happy.

I kept needing a bigger venue for the "Absolutely Free Beekeeping Course".
We maxed out in a Parks Department  art gallery into which we could jam 150
seats, and I still had people standing in the back. Is my Powerpoint-Fu that
strong?  Maybe.  Are my talks that funny?  Yes...NO OF COURSE NOT!  What
happened was that bees became irresistible to precisely the demographic most
likely to buy into the nonsense peddled by the crystals and incense crowd.  

And if you taught a beekeeping class, you could actually SMELL it.  I had to
open windows in the depths of winter to ventilate the gallery, as the
combination of objectionable body odor and Patchouli oil made me struggle to
breathe.  The good news is that most of these types have given up on bees,
and moved on to macramé or craft beer brewing. As for animals, they all went
back to "saving the whales", which these days, entails NOT saving any whales
at all, at least not at places large enough to give them a home, Like
SeaWorld.  Now that they have made Orcas seem abused, and those who love
them, abusers, they are moving on to making Belugas look like prisoners of
war.

The current wannabees are orders of magnitude less self-absorbed, as
beekeeping is no longer trendy.  The burst of popularity in beekeeping has
left beekeeping a LOT less white, a LOT less male, and a LOT younger.
That's a good thing.  Old widower beekeepers have plenty of help these days,
and some of them have "harems" of young ladies that they are "mentoring".
(Yep, "mentoring" - that's his story, and he is sticking to it.)

My current line is something along the lines of "No, don't buy bees - send
an email to our mailing list, and find someone who lives near you who you
can assist for a season before you decide if you want to become responsible
for the welfare 80,000 of God's creatures, and strictly liable for the acts
of the roughly 60,000 of them who can sting your neighbors."  I explain that
beekeeping has very low "barriers to entry", but incredibly high "barriers
to success", and a "sunk capital cost" of about $500 over year one, with a
resale value of about zero, due to a lack of demand for used gear.  (Yeah, I
taught 'em well.)

Oh yeah... the carpetbaggers and charlatans?  They are now trying to sell
"apprenticeships" as they cannot even justify renting a room to offer
classes, but as there is now a community of experienced peers keeping bees
in the city, they are debunked at every turn, reviled and shunned.  Their
reputations now precede them, even among the press, who no longer feel
obligated to do stories "on the bees".  'Cept for a few... I was interviewed
by a young man from the Financial Times, who thought it would be nice to do
a story on the "business" of keeping bees in the City.  He was serious.  I
had to wave my hand around at the gym, the pool, and the rooftop sundeck
high above the City where we sat, and asked "Do you honestly think that
HONEY could buy an apartment here in any quantity smaller than tens of
metric tons per year?

"So, you don't make any money?" he asked.

"Sure, we ALL make money" I said.  "But it is BEER money, not MORTGAGE
money."

Thus the interview ended.
 


 

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