Any analysis from the thoughtful Jerry Bromenshenk will be worth
studying, and his note on the threatened budget cuts to the US govt bee
labs is no exception.

        However, I can pass along some results of my country's pioneering
experiments with the final option he mentions:
> close all of the bee labs, even Weslaco, sell or rent all of
>the facilities, and put the recovered funds and the operating budget $$
>into a competitive bee research grants program, open to beekeepers, private
>groups, and universities.

        New Zealand public-service science was sabotaged on a very wide and
rather thorough scale during the staggering treachery of the 1991-92
wreckage wrought by former Rhodes Scholar Hon. Simon Upton, a 'new right'
fanatic.  About 10 govt-owned "crown research institutes" were created from
the shards of the old & respected DSIR, Ministry of Ag research labs,
Forest Dept research centres, etc.  These CRIs had conferred on them by the
fanatical Noo Right Upton *commercial* criteria.  They regularly allege to
Parliament that they have made profits  -  which may be more or less true
as the govt still gives them hundreds of millions annually and they are
free to tout for money from foreign purchasers.  They are among the most
dishonest propagandists for gene-tampering.  They lied on a grand scale to
the recent Royal Commission on GM.  They react to discovery of a
newly-imported pest e.g. varroa by sucking money out of the public purse
for private corporations set up by recently-departed buddies, and nothing
much gets actually done.
        In the course of all this sabotage, many senior scientists in their
prime were forced into premature retirement.  The remaining bosses are
mainly accountants, 'managers', and PR agents.  Pursuing knowledge is
relegated to a very minor status in these commercial outfits.
        Thus the country which the John Birch Society had coloured intense
red  -  70% communist  -  in the 1960s now has less democratic control over
science than the supposed stronghold of capitalism.

        My impassioned advice to youse Yanks is to defend your
public-service bee labs.  They may well need some discipline  -  I have no
idea except what Jerry says  -  but they should not be shut down or
crippled.
        Indeed, the sensible action would be to improve them  AND  add more
funding for other types of bee research such as Jerry sketches.
        In Jerry's 'final option' quoted above lurk many fishhooks,
including "peer" review, by some unfit for this function, of hundreds of
grant applications.
        But it is not a matter of either/or, govt or other.  The colossal
economic value of beekeeping deserves both.

R