a Charles Linder snip followed by my comments...
Happens.  Political correct  is not my point.

>Not certain what the term means to the current generation but I would say to us old school guys it must have the same meaning as 'rude' or 'totally self centered'.  No matter your leaning it's purpose is to discount and marginalize anyone's point of view that in disagreement with your own. One should be leery of using phrases coined by heroin addicts.

>Much of what Charles sezs in his rant I do agree with although I suspect he has missed the larger picture and the context of the history of the bee business and agriculture in general.  Certainly in anyplace that is experiencing quick population growth and buildings going up everywhere land use for almost any agricultural purpose is shrinking. Such is the case here so individual sites are lost due to development and then moved further out. Historically the composition of agriculture has shifted constantly and what seems to be at an increasing rate since the beginning of the industrial revolution. You can sense this if you read back in the ABJ and see how over time commercial operation slowly but steadily moved from Illinois to Wisconsin to Minnesota and then into the Dakota. In the current landscape up thru the midwest you can see old and small former dairy sites (and you thought 'the land of milk and honey' was just a catchy phrase in the Bible?) are now marked by old silo with soybean (may or may not generate a honey crop based on variety and soil type) and corn.  Given this change older beekeepers on the ground in places like Wisconsin now tell me that what once was a reliable 140 pound crop is now more like 70 pounds.  In central North Dakota same story.  Back on the farm the farms and machinery has  gotten bigger so you can set 60 hive in a blooming field of alfalfa one afternoon and next morning wake up to literally sections of bloom now cut down and drying.  Larger farmer and less people also mean the local community is suffering from the decline in population (you can easily witness this in any small town more than 20 miles from the interstate up thru the midwest).  In North Dakota what 30 years ago was vast fields of native pasture and alfalfa is now soybeans and corn.  At least at one time in the US there was the upper plains where ag inputs were small and any concerns about ag residue in the ground and plants was minimum.  Now for good or bad that is all gone and much of this same space is being quickly invaded by the new crop of young beekeepers who believe they have a right to set their bees anywhere. This lack of common accepted courtesy will sooner or later create it own set of physical and social problems. Constantly growing the same crop also generates it own problem as pest population builds and due to any number of real or imagined problems ag chemical use increases steadily.  Herbicides, insecticides and now even fungicides are a constant and building (but yes quite often sub lethal) part of the beekeeping landscape.

>Now there is the newly recognized problem of global warming and shift in long term weather patterns. Several years back we had a long term drought here in Texas that was about 5 years long (sometimes longer depending on your location in Texas) and now a long term drought has enveloped California and this past year much of the Dakotas. Some components of agriculture can reduce the added risk by investing in irrigation but the shrinking supply of available water to pump will only go so far and the water will become increasingly expensive to obtain and pump.  This alternative of investing in capital good to reduce risk is not as far as I can tell available to beekeepers. 

>Most if not all of the audience here is I would guess 'smart enough'.  Smart enough not to be fooled by debating gimmicks or a clever turn of phrase.  I would also suggest each person here could look at a study and the data from that study and come to a somewhat different analysis of what that study really means.  For myself this 'la difference' is a good thing since it allows you to see thing from many different lenses or angles.

Gene in Central Texas        

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