One of the oldest moral codes in farming is 'do no harm to your 
neighbour'. That means you don't do things like throw rocks gathered from 
your fields across the fence into your neighbour's fields. And you don't 
let your fields grow up in weeds that then invade your neighbour's 
property.

I feel our modern migratory beekeeping system tends to break this code by 
spreading pests and diseases. We rationalize doing so by arguing that this 
is the only practical way to feed the world. But as others have pointed 
out, it is a style of beekeeping that is dependent on science to 
continually throw us chemical life lines to avoid collapse. 

The growers that finance this system are also very dependent on science to 
fend off collapse. Because they have planted huge monocultures, their 
crops are very susceptiable to evolving pests and parasites. But, so far, 
so good. And after all, ancient Egyptians floated hives up and down the 
Nile and packed them around on donkeys without any problems, which is such 
a close parallel to today's situation that we should be good.

But don't you find it a little screwy that a beekeeper with 300 hives who 
carefully avoids developing resistant varroa by alternating his mite 
treatments, is considered an impractical dreamer? And that our industry 
leaders are those who are totally dependendent on science to come up with 
the next new mite strip?

The big weakness in our current system is that if science can't come up 
with the next big cure, then we all go down the tubes, because thanks to 
migration and world trade, we've now all got the same disease profile in 
our hives. If science fails us and things do collapse maybe we should 
consider going back to a policy of 'do no harm to your neighbour'.

Ted

Thinking: some of these arguments are harming my brain.  

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