> if they did, that would be the most valuable aspect, not
the arcane management techniques proposed. A bee that
would persist without special treatments, whether chemical
or holistic or whatever, would be worth far more than
all the talk.

The other question is whether such bees are productive
and useful enough to gain widespread acceptance outside
the hobby group.

We have asked the small cell messiah many times what kind
of crop she gets and have been evaded repeatedly, so we can
guess the answer: either she is in such a good area that
if she has to ship semi-loads by night to hide how good her
area and her bees are -- or she is embarrassed to say.
Guess what I think.  We know she is not doing pollination,
so what are her bees and techniques good for?

We do have bees that do quite well with little need for
treatment or special equipment -- the so-called Russian
bees -- and they are manageable and productive.  However,
even they are a hard sell as there are apparently, in the
opinion of the real bee experts, the commercial operators,
more productive bees available.

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