Not too long ago Jerry Fries posted:
JF>In America we already have every critter in existnce. Protecting ourselves
>from mites is like closing the barn door after the horse is out. We should
>close our borders to protect the rest of the world from us. This former is
>an attempt at humor but does have a point.
The OLd Drone has been quit a few days but has some editorial opinion to
share based on personal observations he and others have made.
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/ _ \| _ \_ _| \ | |_ _/ _ \| \ | | Not to bee confused with BS
| | | | |_) | || \| || | | | | \| | or the Law from High...
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\___/|_| |___|_| \_|___\___/|_| \_| Contrary comments invited!
Well, not sure we have all of them critter's yet, or at least we have
not found them all in our hives. Give it time...
When one puts the detection of the ex officio importation of bees in
prospective with the real problems regulators in the US and much of the
world have with the detection of illegal drugs and persons illegally
crossing the boarders every single day and night it is easy to believe
that a 'Crossed Eyed Red Queen Bee from Timbuktu carried in a plastic
cage with food and a dozen worker bees would be almost impossible to
detect at the most sophisticated fully armed boarder inspection station.
Each of us must recognize that these things do happen and try to weigh
the risk to at least we who are beekeepers, if nobody else, of something
we have no real control over and the cost and/or the benefit to all or
the lack of benefit by denying that honeybees one way or another do make
it into our countries and what we may be giving up by not making it
possible to satisfy the natural curiosity and interest of many
beekeepers to bring the same or better stock into any country by having
more liberal bee quarantine laws that would or could regulate that flow
in a matter that could protect all interests. More restrictive laws or
more enforcement IMHO is not and has not been the answer and will only
serve to polarize beekeepers against beekeepers and paint us all with
the same public brush as outlaws.
And for a fact it is well know to all who are into the AI or artificial
breeding of bees that the male bee genetic material can be shipped via
mail from anyplace in the world with a very low probability of detection
by regulatory authorities in a regular or coin size envelope the vile or
vile's protected by a thin piece of plastic foam or cardboard. Is it the
normal everyday experience, NO, not in the US, but it has been done more
then once with as far as I have ever heard no detection. Mated queen
bees can also be shipped that way with O loss. It is a violation of the
United States Law to do so.
The majority of beekeepers in the US do know the laws if they do any
traveling at all, but here in California we have at times had one or two
that did not and by chance have been caught and had their exotic bee
imports destroyed after they were well established in their hives. But
this is the exception and for the most part the bee importation laws
work as well as they do not because of the bee police but because those
in the bee industry who could benefit the most do know the risks, and
maybe more important the fact there has not been a real measurable
economic difference in the bee stocks of the world. The MEAT in the
BeeBurger is/has been, and may always be in the quality and quantity of
the bee pasture and not the breeding stock. If there was such a
difference in bees there for sure would not be a boarder wall big or
high enough or a government powerful enough to keep beekeepers from
capitalizing on it as we truly are as a group very responsible but also
very resourceful at dealing with the small beekeeping problems presented
us each day. This is not to say that there is not good bee stocks that
many in the US would like to have a close up and personal hands on look
at, but because there are, and some right this day that beekeepers want
very badly to work with, so I have heard and been told. It is very
apparent that if something is not done to have more regulated
introductions of new stock that interest beekeepers that in time they
will quit asking...and act on their own.
What about political boarders and bee barriers?
As one who has loved and lived on the Mexican boarder I want to add
that all the laws man wants to make is not, will not, and did not keep
my own honey bees or others from flying into Mexico to collect large
amounts of nectar and pollen from plants growing many miles into that
sovereign territory and that highway in the sky is a two way street and
in fact the natural flow in some boarder areas for water and bees is
from Mexico into the United States and both do make that trip with NO
aid from beekeeper or interference from heavily armed boarder guards. I
assume it is the same on our northern boarder I hope without the show
of arms we are daily exposed to on the southern boarder.
Funny things do happen to beekeepers in far off lands.
I know of one world class bee breeder from the US whom I will not name
but is well know and, I am sure there have been more, who was visiting
officially another bee breeder in northern Europe looking for different
stock to test legally in the US. He selected some material that looked
promising and made all local official arrangements for shipment on
receipt by that foreign government of the reams of US quarantine
documents that are required by the US so he could legally import this
stock into the US for advanced study. Within a few days after a few
aside trips he returned home to the US to find his dream bees had
arrived via air mail before he had a chance to fill out the documents
with NO clearance problems at all. (Something was lost in the
translation between beekeepers). At the same time I have in the past
talked with two different one time quarantine station employees from
different countries, that told me of their experiences with legally
imported queen bees in their countries that were deliberately allowed to
die because of bee disease phobia and the politics of upper management,
this was BM or "Before Mites" or any other well hyped problems were
detected in US bees.
Others have said it before but it must be repeated and that is because
we beekeepers in the US still have some faith, (so I have heard), in our
countries legal systems down to our hard working local bee regulators,
this is not the same in all other countries and often the one's that
make the biggest case for their own system are the one's that are
circumvented the most by the experienced citizens of their own country.
The guys with the biggest ads in the Sunday papers don't always have the
best quality products.
I also know from personal experiences of the past that almost every
northern European beekeeper and those from other places that I have had
the pleasure to meet with in the US has offered to send me the world's
best queen bees ex officio and I am sure I am not the only one that is
singled out for this favor between beekeepers. I was tempted but never
succumbed and I was proud of that then but have softened somewhat since
and today support a increased flow of regulated bee genetic material and
bees not because I know of a super bee but just because it makes sense
to have renewed breeding material to chose from. Some of the offers I
received in the past I am sure were politically motivated as they all
seemed to take great pleasure in anything they could do to thwart their
own hard line governments attitudes on just about everything and always
were sent home well supplied with blue genes and PlowBoy magazines, (or
maybe it was PlayBoy), in violation of their own laws and assisted by
this and other US citizen as we have no laws here preventing such
activity for items we find so common.
Changes are coming....sooner or later!
Because of the changing US laws which allow for our NAFTA partners a
increasing free flow of truck movement into our country to our markets
and us a shot at theirs there is good chance in time for a free movement
of honeybees from both Mexico and Canada for the use in commerce,
pollination and/or honey production. But as long as all partners are
satisfied with the present rule making procedures there will be no
effort to effect change...Unless maybe those who depend on honeybees to
pollinate their crops see a need before we beekeepers do. The next move
on package bees and queens produced in the US for export to Canada is
up to the Canadians and because of the time between the closing of the
boarders and when they are likely to open again, if ever, they may find
the producers will not be able to supply their needs at least at the
post WW II prices all enjoyed for generations in the past. What happens
in the future to the south will depend on many factors including in
Mexico some internal changes in other areas of government that today
would preclude the free movement of bees between countries at least the
movement south. As far as the risks of the introduction of undiscovered
pests, genes, or you name it, nature will in time level that playing
field as many in the US have learned after paying a high price for a
someday soon to be announced that three not two unsuccessful government
quarantines on honeybees and their pests and genetic differences, are
no more then real examples of what government quarantines should not be
about. By all reports the Canadian beekeepers has without much aid from
man received the bad news in their own bee hives and in time will
recognize that if it is bad for one we all can expect to pay the price
as far as the biological and genetic pests in honeybees go and if some
want to blame in all on their beekeeping brothers in the US so bee it,
but few beekeepers here in the US blame our problems on Mexico or even
on a dedicated Brazilian bee scientist who received advanced education
at our own UC Davis or the beekeepers in SA who have for years made
regular importations of bee stock from Asia who may easily have had a
few hitch hiking vampire mites of one size or another. It is not even
all that clear if the varroa mites are from Asian stains or both
European and Asia.
Is there more bad news to come?
I am sure that in time we will have had a look at all that is bad, but I
am also as sure that we will overcome the bad news we are receiving this
day and will do the same into the future because beekeepers are all a
special people and really do have some strange abilities in common that
is yet not been identified but may be some broken genes passed on
randomly from generation to generation that enables beekeepers to be
beekeepers when most other are not and to make good to spite the bad
without despoiling our neighbors bed, sometimes called "infectious
opportunism".
ttul, the OLd Drone
BTW. US friends, Just a day ago I tuned into the Ross Peerow political
road show and heard his degrading remarks about "not hiring a beekeeper
to build a skyscraper", I agreed with all his degrading "facts" on
President Clinton a real lame duck winner he is not, but would tell
Peerow that he better have a closer look at who his engineers really are
as from one beekeeping family I know real personal there are two sons, a
daughter and two son in laws that are all professional engineers as well
as experienced in the beekeeping life and for sure he has more then once
passed under or over one of the highway bridges the daughter designed,
operated a computer the son in law designed the INTEL Inside chip for,
or run his cheep car on the oil the youngest son tested in the Texas
engineering lab he works for and could be using the gasoline the other
son in law created in the petrol engineering lab he works in. Makes no
never mind to me as I voted for DOLE anyway...OPUS, one son did go bad
after earning his engineering degree with high honors, he got the silver
cup, 2nd or 3rd in his class for smarts and then chose to be the third
generation commercial beekeeper in his family. Amazing all of these kids
were deprived and reared without the benefits of television....but all
took their turns in the honeyhouse and bee yards and still had time to
read a book or two.
11396
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~ QMPro 1.53 ~ Two wrongs don't make right, but three rights make a left
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