>Recent report summarizes what is known about CCD, and what the overall impact has been on US beekeeping:

> I strongly disagree with most of their conclusions.

etc.

Hi all,
I think it's telling that people can blithely dismiss a report which
was obviously hundreds of hours in the making. Ironically, it was not
picked up by the media or anyone else that I know of. It was due to my
incessant sleuthing that I stumbled upon it.

There was a summation by the authors in the Wall Street Journal,
however. They wrote, in part:

There is no evidence that CCD has measurably affected the pollinated
food supply.
If the effects of CCD were economically widespread and significant,
increased costs
to beekeepers would dictate that farmers would have to pay more to
secure pollination
services. But fees charged by beekeepers for pollinating crops have
shown at most modest
signs of increase since the appearance of CCD.

The beekeeping industry has long been exposed to the boom and bust
cycle. Astute beekeepers have always hedged their bets, either by
having enough hives to make a bumper crop that can tide them over
through lean ones, or by diversifying into pollination or bees for
sale.

Really, the fortunes of beekeepers have risen and sunk on the price of
honey, which has nothing to do with bee health, but is global in
nature. When I got out of the business in 1990 the price was being
propped up by the US govt., instead of banning imports, which would
have driven domestic prices up. If demand is high, and prices are
high, beekeepers can make a decent profit.

All the rhetoric about "what if the bees disappeared from the face of
the earth" is an attempt to solicit sympathy for what has been a dying
industry for decades. Again, with some degree of irony, all the
publicity has kindled interest in honey and bee products, which
increases demand and pushes the prices up.

Instead of bleating about CCD and flocking to government teats like
ELAP, folks should polish up the product, promote local honey and bee
services, and if that doesn't work for you, maybe you're in the wrong
line of work.

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