> I don't like extra chemicals in my food, and I am an old dairy man.
> Still, at times we need to use treatments - but I'm in favor of a
> form of Integrated Pest Management. Treat or deal with (burn) when
> and if needed for diseases, pests. Choose your treatments and
> cultural practices carefully. ... However, if the public ever goes
> to zero tolerance for chemicals as well as antibiotics and other
> biologicalsin honey - there's no way that can be accomplished.  40
> years of analyzing things in bee colonies - their widespread
> ranging, use of nectar, pollen, resin, water; with electrostatically
> sticky branched hairs - they sample everything. There is no such
> thing as zero anything in a bee colony. There's no such thing as
> truly organic honey; even in the remotest areas of the west where the
> nearest neighbor maybe 20-30 miles away.

Pardon the long quote, but here is the practical voice of reason from
someone who has researched this area and really knows.

Hopefully people will read his words carefully and not just pick a few
to jump on to justify skimming the rest and then running off on a tangent.

Hopefully these words will guide further discussion and maybe close some
of the more hypothetical discussions about rainbows and unicorns and
childrens' stories projecting some imaginary 'perfect' world in
the minds of some bee beginners and some imaginary composite consumer so
we can move on and deal with the hard realities of this one.

This clearly debunks the dream of producing pure, ideal and pristine
honey in some backyard beehive and exposes the fallacies inherent in
believing that higher safety can be found any food obtained from any
small area than from a variety of locales without knowing far more about
the soil and water chemistry of the small locality than is practical.

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