>> I sometimes wonder if Amm enthusiats are more concerned with conservation
>> than beekeeping,

>Since when was conservation a bad thing?

Who can disapprove of conservation -- or Mom's Apple Pie, for that matter?

However, conservation is not really what was in question.  What I suspect
was being pondered was the methods being chosen to try to accomplish
conservation with a free-flying free-mating insect like the honey bee, the effect 
on beekeeping in the regions -- and the justification.

When the term,' conservation' means maintaining the purity -- imagined or real -- of 
the remnants of a supposedly extinct or nearly extinct and reconstituted strain by 
use of quarantines and legislation, then we are not talking so much about
conservation, but rather a project in which there is bound to be a conflict of ideas 
relating to rights, privileges, priorities and restraint of trade.

While conservation is admirable in the minds of men, Nature seems to be 
indifferent or perhaps unaware of its importance and we see a constant succession 
of species and strains in various changing niches.  

In nature, over time, we see periodic and seemingly indiscriminate extinctions, 
and highly destructive events like earthquakes, natural eruptions, meteor collisions,
volcanic flows, oil and gas seeps and epidemics destroying and displacing what 
seem to us to be "deserving" species, so it would seem that "conservation" is 
a human concept in response to a problem perceived by humans -- and not at 
all natural.

In the extreme, beyond preserving resources of obvious and immediate value to 
mankind, conservation for its own sake may be regarded as just another human 
conceit, and one which, although preceived as admirable, may be totally out 
of step with nature.  By its very nature, like all other human activity, it distorts 
what would be natural outcomes, sans humanity.

That being said, I tend to favour conservation over wasteage, but this project 
seems to me to be just another human-managed and artificial intervention in 
nature, with no benefit beyond the entertainment value.

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