>Peter's and Allen's posts are valid in asking for the
>name of a large commercial pollinator who is all organic and makes a
>living from it.

I'm not really seeing your point, Bill.  Can you explain a little more 
carefully?  The first thing that occurs to me is that there's no market, no 
premium, no demand for organic pollinators, right?  So what's the point?  
Why do organic?  Because you believe in it?  I worked for a pollinator for 
a year.  It's hard work, especially the loading, unloading, the moving, the 
trucking, etc.  Does anybody enjoy driving big trucks through the middle of 
the night?  People don't truck bees across the country for the good of 
creation.  They do it for the money.  And if it's about the money, why 
bother with things that don't help the bottom line?  It's like asking ADM 
how many of the farmers that supply them with corn for their commodity corn 
syrup happen to be organic.  The answer is obvious.

On the other hand, I know two beekeepers from these parts that went to 
almonds the last couple years, and both of them use "organic" (by OMRI-type 
standards) mite controls.  One uses an essential oil homebrew, the other 
used formic.  Neither of them adheres to rigid standards, because neither 
of them is a pharisee; they're commercial beekeepers, they're practically 
oriented.

My point, though, is that organic is a values thing.  That's a simple 
truth, isn't it?  If it's a values thing, isn't it significant if those 
values are consistent with distant monocultures or lots of trucking or high 
input management or mass marketing, etc?  I'm not saying it's black and 
white, and I'm not saying these things are incompatible, but if organic is 
a values thing, it should be shaped by those values, and one way or 
another, we should expect organic business models to look different.

If we're looking for a standard business model for a successful organic 
beekeeper, I think we're way off if we're talking about a conventional 
beekeeper minus the disqualified inputs.  If we even need to have a 
standard type, I'd suggest a small farmer that keeps a few dozen hives on 
his own farm in permanent yards, labor-intensive and input-frugal, making 
his money from honey and keeping the pollination benefits for himself and 
for a free gift to his neighbors, mostly direct marketing to his community, 
and making enough profit to keep pace with other modest, local farmers and 
tradesmen.  Such a beekeeper may not be very statistically significant when 
it comes to proving things, but I think he's a pretty good model of organic 
success.  Most of all, I wouldn't want to rule out a model like that.

Eric

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