Hi all
Honestly, I was a bit surprised at the flak I took from trying to warn beekeepers from participating in field trials. Beekeeping has gotten pretty expensive and there are large risks with experimentation. Believe me, I know. At the Dyce Lab we usually restocked most of 200 or so hives every spring. But I wonder why the makers of HopGuard are still doing trials. The product was first discussed here at Bee-L in 2010:

There is another one in the works, too. HopGuard is a product of the hop industry. They tout hop extracts for a variety of ailments, including cancer. However, I would point out that there is a huge glut of hops on the market so there may be other motives for trying to bring hop products to market.

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> An unprecedented hop supply surplus. In crop year 2008, 2,600 tons of the alpha harvested was surplus to requirements; in crop year 2009, the surplus alpha amounted to 3,500 tons. The 2010 crop will probably add another 1,000 - 2,000 tons of alpha to this surplus. In total, by the end of the 2010 marketing campaign growers and merchants will be left with stocks of surplus hops amounting to approximately one year's production. Before the 2010 harvest has even started, the warehouses of the trading companies are bursting at the seams with hops harvested in crop years 2008 and 2009 which have been sold but not yet shipped.

> For one thing is clear. The faster the hop industry is able to eliminate the structural hop surplus, the faster the markets will enter a phase of recovery. The longer it takes to remove this surplus, however, the bigger the surplus stocks will become and the longer it will take the market to absorb the surplus. Experience shows that these old stocks are sold at rock-bottom prices and will thus affect markets for years to come, even if everything has returned to normal in structural terms. 

Press release from the German Hop Industry Association

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