> ... in bee mags for the past few decades, this simply hasn’t ever been a
problem in beekeeping periodicals.
I have no opinion on the current bee magazines but I see advertising impact
on content, particularly reviews, in yachting magazines and car mags.
In beekeeping, I am thinking back to the era when competing bee equipment
and supply manufacturers established the dominant bee magazines,
wrote books, and supported associations with meetings that featured their
ideas and their products and increased their sales. All of these financed
further manufacturing expansion and missionary work and changed the
direction of beekeeping to the benefit of the manufacturers and, maybe,
beekeepers and the public.
Keepers of gums and skeps had no financial incentive to advertise,
associate, or evangelize and before long the traditional beekeepers were
marginalized and demonized for harbouring an imported scourge that was
devastating manufactured hives and fancy imported stock, and although AFB
in skeps and gums is a different problem, fixed comb beekeeping was
outlawed.
In spite of much weeping and gnashing of teeth, AFB was a bonanza for
manufacturing, research, and regulatory folks. AFB increased the demand for
moveable frame hives, both as replacement for gums and skeps, and for hives
burned due to AFB or suspected AFB, plus AFB provided an excuse to justify
government sponsored research and compulsory inspection of hives and
magazine articles even to this day. WIn/win/win.
The manufacturers and their customers with their money and passion had far
more clout in deciding funding and direction of research than the
traditional beekeeper. Research and extension efforts primarily went into
quick and temporary fixes like sulfathiazole (another product to sell) and
various gimmicks. Stock selection to reduce susceptibility was not top
priority, nor was improved management of low cost fixed frame hives.
Is the Langstroth hive the best solution for the average beekeeper today,
commercial pressures and widespread adoption aside?
What would have happened if efforts had gone into advancing the more
traditional practices and the old ways had not been overpowered by the
money in manufacturing solutions to problems that had not existed
previously.
Sometimes a butterfly...
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