>I grow apples in the Midwest. I am self suffiicient,

I grow apples also ( my crop was about fifteen apples I pulled off the trees
and tossed on the compost heap this year !). Will take a few years to make
up the money lost for this years freeze as the trees will need extra pruning
and still needed care. How was your crop this year Brian?

 The one constant in agriculture is change. If you can not adapt to change
then you go under or have got city income(wife or city employment to support
your farming) and beekeeping or apple growing is really a overgrown hobby.

I do beekeeping for a living and am successful. Apples (all fruit in our
area in fact ) were a 90% complete loss due to the late freeze. We still got
paid (were worried for awhile)for the hives placed into apple pollination
(we do the largest number in the state of Missouri) but they report only a
10% crop from the late blooming varieties. Bankruptcy might be in their
future. When I relocated into this area there were 17 commercial apple
orchards and now there are only four.

Four large commercial beekeepers have went bankrupt since then also.

Most farming runs a loss three out of five years. I would not stay in
beekeeping if I ran a loss three out of five years. My secret is I treat
each year different. What I did last year has no bearing on the current
year.

bob


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