> 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 *********************************************** The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html