Aaron Morris wrote:
> And if you want to stick to the continental US, post 1859, the first
example I can think of is CC Miller moving hives in horse drawn wagons. I
am sure there are plenty of other examples.
Apropos migratory beekeeping: back in the 1970s and 1980s I knew lots of
beekeepers who pollinated and moved their hives around from honeyflow to
honeyflow.
They had great looking bees and got huge honey crops. The price of honey was
soft then, so it wasn't exactly a gold mine, but some did really well.
Those same beekeepers are now having a hard time keeping their bees alive.
What changed? Mites. We have not really got a handle on it. Nosema. No doubt
it's contributing.
But the one thing that didn't change: trucking bees. Bees have been trucked
around big time since at least the 1940s. This is not the cause of current
problems.
pb
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