This thread illustrates the problem. Some folks are putting quite a bit of time into the exchange. We're preaching to the choir. In the US, we should be directing our comments to our legislatures, State and Federal, and to the USDA. Until I was roped into helping with a small family apiary, I thought the honey subsidy was a terrible misuse of Federal funds, however few. Now I know better and take every opportunity to let my Rep know why. Because we are really small potatoes and sell everything we produce retail, thank you, I emphasize support of bees as pollinators which justifies anything that can be done to keep beekeepers, large and small, in business and thriving. I also point out that the costs of keeping healthy hives has skyrocketed. There are local beekeeping clubs all over the place. We have some pretty decent writers enrolled here on this list. It appears to me the resources are in place to organize a demand that funds be returned to the industry, that the allowable restrictions on imports be enforced, and that funds be put back into research on parasites, adulterants in imported product, etc. As for the milk industry: we should infiltrate it to see how, in an amply supplied market, they can sustain the prices they do and how, given the same glut, they managed to get the production inducing, cow destroying hormone approved. --