I often cringe at the word-picking ways of this listserv, but in this situation I guess I will participate.

After another harried day of getting my honey jarred and ready for market, I pause for lunch to read the lastest "Catch the Buzz" from Bee Culture. It's a post about Sioux Honey's "Who Does Your Honey Come From?" campaign. Notwithstanding the awkward phrasing of the campaign name, it sounds like a decent and timely initiative and similar to Beemaid Honey's recent re-branding initiatives in Canada. 

And then this bizarre statement: 

“Sioux Honey is synonymous with quality and with values,” said Darrel Rufer, a Minnesota beekeeper featured in the campaign. “I know a lot of Sioux Honey members, and they’re all the same. It’s not about seeing how much money you can make, or how fast. Beekeeping is not big agriculture. Beekeeping is big families. A lot of brothers, sons, dads, grandfathers. That’s why it’s a generational thing. It’s a lifestyle.”

Last I checked, big families have women in them too... Statistically speaking, if the beekeeping industry is viewed as "big family" rather than "big agriculture," it must have nearly the same number of women as men. There are as many sisters, daughters, mothers, and grandmothers in the world, and so presumably also in the beekeeping "family," as their male counterparts. Women may not always be in the beeyards or at the conferences, but they are in the honey houses extracting the honey, organizing the high school employees, keeping the books and records, and grafting the queens. Oh, and creating and caring for the sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, dads, and grandmothers and grandfathers. 

I don't want to point fingers at the editors of Bee Culture who let that statement through, at Darrel Rufer, who is just speaking from his own perspective, or at Sioux Honey, who could perhaps pick their spokespeople or messages more carefully,  but I can say I will be making a special toast this New Year's to all the women in this industry who are under-acknowledged, under-respected, and in this case, entirely forgotten. So cheers to all the sisters, daughters, mothers, grandmothers, and fellow female beekeepers out there. May the New Year bring a change in attitudes. 

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