----- Original Message -----
From: "allen" <[log in to unmask]>
>>> If they had any thought for their 'environmental credentials' they would
>>> cease growing almonds
>>> [or] keep their own bees for pollination, reducing the need for shifting
>>> bees around the country
>
>> Seems like everybody is down on migratory beekeepers these days. These
>> guys are the unsung heroes of modern fruit production, IMHO.
>
> Yes, and it is easy for those who know very little or have limited
> experience about US beekeeping or farming to make high-sounding
> pronouncements, but the simple fact is that the people involved are highly
> educated, well experienced, well travelled, and are constantly examining
> their options.
Amen to that, Allen!
> As a note of interest and illustration of what typically happens when
> growers try to be beekeepers, ...
I've known a number of fruit growers that attempted to keep their own bees.
I've only seen one do it with any success at all. One of them had over 50
hives and more than 40 of them turned up with AFB. Now that takes a lot of
neglect! What happened is that the farm employee did not have much
training, and every time he was scheduled to work with the bees, he'd get
yanked to some "more important" job.
Growing (whether almonds or fruit) demands a whole different skill set than
keeping bees, and neither are learned as quickly and easily as the other
"side" tends to think.
I've had growers ask me to just "manage" their bees and I think I've been
wise to refuse. I've had too much to do with my own. On one occasion I gave
in to persistant requests and "checked" a grower's bees to evaluate them and
teach his hired man.
I went into one yard and spotted my own brand immediately. He had purchased
a bunch of hives on the cheap from a crackhead that worked for another
grower, who had stolen them from me when they were in that orchard. I got
those bees back; the crackhead went to jail, but it wasn't much of a
redemption, as the bees were in pretty poor shape from neglect and poor
handling. So were the rest of his bees.
> Pollinating bees need to be moved to good pasture annually to recover from
> the pollination or they dwindle and die.
Plus it becomes a toxic environment as soon as bloom is finished. Planting
lavender, or any other nectar crop in commercial groves or orchards is a
very naive idea. It would be a massacre of the bees. It's been a years-long
battle to get growers to see that the clover in sodded orchards is causing
the wipeout of any native pollinators that might be present.
>I suppose we could fantasize about what might happen in a perfect world
>(different for each of us), but this is how it is because it is how it has
>to be, in the real world in which we live today.
I keep running into ivory tower types who think that North America should be
returned to its pristine ecology before the evil, invasive honeybees came.
I've been telling them they should make honest persons of themselves and
immediately return to the land of their ancestors. To be ethically
consistant, that's what you'd have to do.
Sigh! We want to be environmentally responsible and work to preserve all
that can be preserved, but we also have to live in the real world, as Allen
says.
Dave Green
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