I've been busy with my bees and writing and editing pictures for my daily diary,
so have not had much time or inclination to write to BEE-L lately.

I have, however been reading.  As a co-moderator, I should read everything that
comes in, at least to the extent that I am sure that the article is on-topic,
not a virus, non-redundant, not re-quoting previous posts to the point of
clogging our archives with repetition, or personally abusive beyond our accepted
limits before approving.  Since there are only a few of us and at any given time
one or more may be away, I try to check daily and often posts are approved in
real time.

Strangely, there was almost a total stoppage of posts a little while back and I
began to worry that BEE-L was in decline.  Then the dam broke and we've had a
veritable flood of email on many topics, some of which are even related to bees.

It's pretty fascinating to watch this deluge go by.  I'm to busy to jump into
the torrent, and maybe age brings some wisdom.  Once critical lesson, I learned
right here on BEE-L years back when someone advised "Don't argue with an idiot.
Latecomers to the debate will be unable to discern which of you is the idiot".

A lot of it seems to me to be politics and opinion.  This is supposed to be an
INFORMED list, but I sometimes think back to Andy's injunction: "Opinions are
not facts, use at your own risk".  I got into trouble with one subscriber
when -- as moderator -- I politely suggested that some of his voluminous quotes
submitted (complete with a monstrous binary attachment) might be considered by
some to be propaganda.  My definition of propaganda considered one-sidedness as
a primary criterion and did not consider whether the cause promoted was 'right'
or not.  The contributor in question did not like the dictionary I used and
disdainfully dismissed it as being 'American' and I think he used some other
unflattering qualifiers.

I did not bother to respond, but was amused later to see a gob of very American
material go by triggered by the demise of Horace Bell's empire.  Once again,
there was a paucity of fact, but much opinion -- and an inevitable linkage to
each writer's personal biases about politics and trade, and not much mention of
the fact that small businesses rise and fall for many reasons -- as indeed do
the large well known ones.

Bee stings are still big news to beekeepers.  Big business and government are
still our enemies, and GMOs are the work of the devil or the salvation of the
human race, not just the same old tinkering with the life support system we have
been getting away with in many areas for generations (Right, George?).

People form and promulgate conclusions without examining the obvious evidence or
even looking, and others are willing to guess and diagnose convincingly in the
absence of any facts whatsoever.

The archives go largely unread -- and everything old becomes new again.

Nothing really changes and BEE-L runs on strong.

Thank goodness.

allen
--
Come visit me at 'A Beekeeper's Diary': http://www.internode.net/HoneyBee/Diary/
Package installation & performance experiments, winter loss, fondant feeding,
Pierco vs. Permadent vs. dark comb, unwrapping bees, spring splitting tricks,
AFB, varroa, protein patties, pollination, staff worries, daily mumblings and
more... Thousands served...