ALDEN MARSHALL wrote:
>The post was intended as more of perhaps a 
> wake up call to change direction! >

This subject can easily go where we have often gone before and end up with a 
commercial/organic/sustainable/pesticide/holistic/pragmatic/yougettheidea thread and would accomplish little 
other than increase the entropy of the universe as well as killing off countless electrons as they die under 
Aaron's delete button.

But it is intriguing. What is the future of beekeeping? Where are we going as a semi-collective group? Is there 
one direction for commercial operations and another for hobbyists and side-liners?

I look at CCD as just another problem that beekeepers have encountered for thousands of years and usually the 
bee helps us out by not following our script. It is not a canary in the mine. Varroa is more a problem than CCD 
and is probably linked with it, in spite of "low Varroa loads" found in CCD colonies.

What I see in the future of most animal husbandry is what is happening in human husbandry, also known as the 
human health industry. If you follow scientific studies published daily in the US and GB, most of them deal with 
the HHI which includes nutrition, genetics, disease, and the like, all things we look at in beekeeping.

One of the most important scientific projects in the last several years was the mapping of the human genome. 
(Note 1)

That has led to advances in medicine and actual changes to living being's DNA sequence to combat disease.

The honeybee's genetic sequence has also been mapped. I do not see a giant leap to change its DNA sequence to 
combat disease when we are doing it to ourselves. It is difficult to ride the anti-GMO wagon when we ourselves 
are becoming GMO. In essence, our DNA is being changed to rid ourselves of problems and become "normal". Truth 
is, when we step outside the door and get hit by cosmic rays, our DNA can take a hit. And we have found that 
bacteria present at conception can also cause significant DNA changes. We have always been GMO as has all of 
nature. Otherwise Darwin would have been wrong. Now we are more selective and have control over what is changed.

There is another route, and people like Joe W. are following it, which is to let the bees take care of the 
problem. But how do you do that on a national scale as well as keeping it economically viable? The answers are 
usually draconian and involve the government. Plus, with human nature being what it is, there will always be 
shop towels and those who hide under the pretense of complying.

So these are two future routes for beekeeping. Are there others? How do we implement any of them so that all 
beekeepers benefit?

One caveat on this subject- anyone who says small cell, organic, pesticides and the like will hear a knock on 
their door and meet, in a close and extremely prejudicial manner, some of my close friends from East Boston.

Bill Truesdell (Note 1.The human gnome has been already mapped and is found mostly in UK front yards.)
Bath, Maine

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