>A profitable operation is very different from the artisanal handcrafted beekeeping most often advocated here on Bee-L. 

Are you suggesting that artisanal handcrafted beekeeping is not profitable?  In normal years, about 1/3 of my sales are at farmers markets, 1/3 are at festivals and craft shows, and 1/3 of my sales are selling wholesale to stores.  I normally run 75-100 hives producing 5,000-7,000 pounds of honey, and have no problem keeping my operation profitable.
Granted, I am a one-man show, but my sideline operation can pay my bills. 
I am planning on expanding my queen rearing to include sales, instead of just raising queens for myself.  How many $30-$35 queens do you have to sell to be profitable?

>I talk about profitability sometimes... and I hear only crickets...

Maybe once we achieve profitability, we're too busy catching those crickets to use as bait because we are going fishing?
Or is it that Bee-L is populated by many in academia, and profitability is a foreign concept to them?

US Gold Eagles and Silver Dollars are still legal tender, but like the Krugerrand, no one is going to spend a silver dollar (that costs $30) at face value, or spend a $50 gold eagle on a bar tab.

>It's not that "academics" are political, it is that they deal in facts.  But accusing facts of being biased is common these days.

Academia is bought and paid for, and in bed with the government and media.  I believe that anyone who believes that academia deals in facts has their head buried in the sand.  If academia deals in facts, they are only dealing with the "facts" that support their position, and sweeping pesky facts under the carpet.

Academia is heavily pushing Marxist ideology, identity politics, equality of outcome, political correctness, and other such complete nonsense.

Academia even tries to advance the ridiculous notion that everyone should attend college.  Keep in mind that only 1 in 4 Americans are literate enough to read and understand anything more than a newspaper.  The US military has been doing IQ research for 100 years, and they have come to the conclusion that if you have an IQ lower than 83, there is no job that you can be trained to do.  That's over 10% of the population.  Or what about IQ research that shows that if you have an IQ less than 90, you lack the ability to follow written directions because you can't comprehend what you are reading?  That's 25% of people. Yet academia advances the notion that everyone should go to college, because even the idiots can get college loans from the government and pay inflated tuition rates.  How many students are at colleges because of affirmative action, rather than being there because of academic merit?

Academia is bought and paid for with government funding, and college loans to pay inflated tuitions.  You can bet your butt that academia isn't going to do anything to upset the applecart and jeopardize their gravy train.

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