Greetings
The bee labs have not done research on honey in years, so far as I
know. I don't think they see that as their mission. The general
public has never had the great appreciation of honey that beekeepers
do and most people are not even aware that there are many flavors of
honey. Decades of promotion hasn't really changed this. Many people
see the only future for beekeeping in the US as tied to pollination.

Dr, Calderone and Dr. Morse, of the Dyce Lab, promoted this idea in
their report in 2000. I know some beekeepers do not want to do
pollination.

>Based on a study of the figures published by the National
>Agricultural Statistics Service of the USDA, interviews with
>beekeepers, extensionists and researchers, we estimate that there
>were 2,500,000 colonies rented for pollination purposes in 1998.
>This is up from 2,035,000 in 1989, representing an 18.6 percent
>increase.

see http://bee.airoot.com/beeculture/pollination2000/pg1.html

Maybe we could talk about ways that small beekeepers could get in to
pollination; ways to make it more feasible for them. For example, I
find moving bees in a pickup truck to be a breeze now that I have a
lift gate. This device is almost foolproof, unlike various boom
loaders. I also move the hives screened, which I didn't use to do. I
used to load them up open, by myself, by hand, and always dreaded it
(no wonder).


--
Peter Borst <[log in to unmask]>