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Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology

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Subject:
From:
Mark Berninghausen <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Fri, 28 Feb 2014 06:38:07 -0500
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Seeing the lack of discussion on the actual topic of this Thread, "$3 Million for a New Program to Improve Pollinator Health", is it safe to assume that no one is impressed by this? That it is inconsequential?

Seems to me that spending $3M with the intention of improving bee forage is but a drop in the bucket of a complex and complicated situation which very few people fully understand to a meaningful depth, let alone those folks w/ their hands on the purse strings, let alone me.

So what is your reaction, your opinion, to the program? Mine is, "That isn't very much money." But maybe that's even too simple and narrow of a way of looking at it. What is behind such a program? Who does it benefit? I don't really see it having any impact on bees, beekeepers, honey production, or pollinator health, do you? 

And which pollinators is this intended to have an effect on anyway? Native pollinators? It seems like it would take a lot more than pasture improvement to actually benefit the native pollinators.

And if it is meant to benefit the managed honeybees so there are more and healthier hives available to pollinate almonds, the economic driver of modern migratory beekeeping, then that seems to indicate a lack of understanding on someones part about the relationships between a number of factors and factions, human, nonhuman, economic, ecologic, agricultural, and more.

As far as pasture improvement in the Mid West goes, don't most dairy farmers there run their operations like they do in NY,  where cows aren't pastured at all? My Hoardes Dairyman subscription ran out eons ago. So I am not up on what dairy farmers are up to in the mid west.

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