Perhaps the commenters would offer up some actual proposals for research projects that would be merit spending money on? Maybe the important work has been covered?


Excellent thought Pete.


All day I have been chewing on a reply,  and in fact been stewing a bit for months on beekeeping here in the US.   
Fact is, IMO, we are ripe for crappy research. The group of beekeepers is the most ragtag backwards group I have ever been involved with.  Backwards stubborn,  and salt of the earth people.  But wow!

No offense towards Pete, but he quotes stuff that’s 50 or more years old,  and still relavant.  Frankly that’s very disturbing!
Yea I know some of you are now going   what???  Please continue...  with an open mind.

All my life I have been in AG,  from day one raising seed corn and Angus,  to marrying into a milking family and farrowing hogs.   In that time AG has changed  at levels most of you won't understand.  Hogs for example in the 70's they were still fed slop,  and days to market was a full 2 months longer than it is today.   I was reading an article yesterday about how turkeys now weigh 2 times as much in less time than they did in 1940.   Corn yields and beans are on a constant rise.  Where am I heading?  Simple  in any of these areas if you quote how to raise hogs from 1970,  you will be so outdated your neighbors will be  ashamed.   Plant corn like you did in 1970, and you will get a visit from the county AG extension.


But us in beekeeping?  We cling to the old ways,  we refuse standards.  I mentioned this to a friend who raises 100k queens a year this last week,  and his comment when I mentioned standards for queens?  " no queen breeder would accept them"   For a moment lets just assume he's wrong.  WE need some standards,  first off measurement standards  We should have a standard for how we measure honey production,  or brood production,  or hours flying a day(anyone remember where midnights got the name?) I am not sure what all the criteria should be,  but do know we have none.
With no standards (and we have literally none)  we are ripe to be pulled, mislead and misdirected at every turn. Every queen breeder makes claims and we whine, every nuc seller badmouths packages,  and every researcher thinks what they are doing will save our bees.

Look at Randy,  hell he's the most famous guy we have,  why?  Because he runs some experiments and writes about them, and they are relavant. How many others out their in our group are doing it?  Most of us are still reading some pretty old tomes as our gospels.  Randys running xperiments that many of which, are old school myths he's retesting (kudos for that)  But why the heck are we still wondering how much honey you lose to wax?  Or which feed is better HFCs 55 or honey??   Or when to feed pollen sub?  How did Dr. Lu get away with his research that showed neonics in HFCS when there is no evidence that every happened?  Because we have no standard bearer, or group like the National Soybean council.

If you raise corn,  you know exactly how much nitrogen to add based on your soil type,  and which hybrids to chose from based on weather,  you know if you raise cattle how much protein per lb of body weight to feed EXACTLY,  and as a result,  much research is directed in those channels,  how to increase and watch for things that effect those common goals.
The BIP program is getting a start,  but its 3 years old, and measuring losses as its key metric (to keep funding up) Sorry,  but I really don't think that’s going to help much other than raise some awareness. We need something to tell us where to go, and whats important.  
There of course will always be naysayers,  those who would say our selection of standards for AG has driven us to genetic bottlenecks (hardly)  but I watch a slide in one  presentation,  and it appears to me from queens  we may already be there.
In fairness there have been some local and state level clubs who have done some GREAT things.  The California State Beekeepers for example (we should all be members) funds a lot of research,  and I am sure their our others.  But they are still Local.  National standards and goals still elude us.

Just a thought,  but to me this is why our research is horribly misdirected and scattered,  as a group we are. As for solutions,  pondering a few things.  I would love serious input. But until we figure out some serious industry standards and measurements we will be in this same spot 100 years from now.

My apologies if this seems off track,  but its my take on why so much of our research misses the mark completely.

Charles

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