Greetings Folks:

Peter astutely quotes, "However, his warning is that the man whose sole 
aim is the accumulation of wealth would better let bees alone; but all bee 
keepers agree that health, pleasure and a comfortable living are found in 
intelligently raising honeybees."

In a similar vein, Rachel Carson, too, warns against the human obsession 
to BEND the nature, ultimately, to our own demise:


"Under prmitive agricultural conditions the farmer had few insect [or 
mite] problems.  These arose with the intensification of agriculture—-the 
devotion of immense acreages to a single crop [such as almonds].  Such a 
system set the stage for explosive increases in specific insect [or mite]
populations.  Single-crop farming does not take advantage of the 
principles by which nature works; it is agriculture as an engineer might 
conceive it to be.  Nature has introduced great variety into the 
landscape, but man has displayed a passion for simplifying it.  Thus he 
undoes the built-in checks and balances by which nature holds the species 
within bounds.  One important natural check is a limit on the amount of 
suitable habitat for each species.  Obviously then, an insect [or a mite] 
that lives on wheat [honey bees] can build up its population to much 
higher levels on a farm devoted to wheat [monocrop pollination] than on 
one in which wheat is intermingled with other crops to which the insect is 
not adapted"(Silent Spring 10; emphases are mine).

Just a thought, as the bee-season grinds down gradually to a halt.


Yoon

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