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Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology

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Subject:
From:
James Fischer <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Fri, 10 Jan 2014 22:45:48 -0500
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> The majority of ordinary beekeepers in 
> NYS do not seem to have had a chance 
> to speak up.

The essential problem at hand has not been silence from beekeepers, rather,
it has been the enthusiastic willingness of several tiny groups of
self-interested beekeepers to each falsely claim that they spoke for the
majority of ordinary beekeepers without doing anything to build a consensus
among contrasting viewpoints, or to earn a mandate to speak for anyone but
themselves.

The ordinary beekeepers honestly could not care less what happens in Albany,
or what happens in interstate migratory pollination, or what happens to the
interstate pollination operations so foolish as to declare NY their "home
state".  The ordinary beekeeper has a handful of hives, makes some honey,
and sells every drop of it by Christmas.  The hives that overwinter get
split, and some of the splits are sold or given to other hobbyists.  Queens
are raised by groups of beekeepers under the banner of a "locally adapted
queen" without any idea of what testable traits would be different for a
"local" bee vs a "non-local" bee.

The local ties among communities of beekeepers are close and strong, but the
older, more experienced hands have passed along a profound distrust of NY Ag
and Markets, often with extensive data and evidence to back up their
distrust, including the Woody Guthrie-esq "8×10 color glossy pictures with
circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back".  Despite the trivial effort
that would be required to actually survey each and every member of each and
every local group, no one has ever bothered to actually poll the local
groups on any issue.

Regardless, I don't think that asking "who speaks for the beekeepers?" is as
important as asking "who speaks for the bees?".  

In an urban context, I've found that the agenda of beekeepers and their bees
is best advanced by presenting beekeeping as one small part of "community
gardening".  The numbers of community gardeners are legion, they are fierce
defenders of their "turf", even when the actual garden turf was not legally
acquired, and they are very well politically connected.


> "Dishonesty and Selection into Public Service", 
> Hanna & Wang, Nov 2013, 
> It's paywalled unfortunately

Leap tall paywalls in a single bound!
http://assets.wharton.upenn.edu/~was/corruption_selection_paper.pdf
http://tinyurl.com/k37kkth

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