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Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology

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Subject:
From:
Dave Cushman <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Fri, 11 Jan 2002 21:04:26 -0000
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Hi Aaron, Aleksander & all

I clipped this from Aaron's post...
> living in ignorant bliss(?) of the fact that your own ledgers
> are telling you that you are embracing a doomed pursuit of trying to make
a
> living off bees without cheap easy chemical controls!  Economy has no
> feelings!  It's like Nature!  Nature doesn't lament when natural disasters
> claim hundreds or thousands!  Economics don't lament when the bottom line
> claims causalities either!  It just is.

Beekeepers, whether hobbiest or large scale commercial, have to re-evaluate
their methods and the economics of those methods. Varroa will not disappear
or mollify sufficiently for colony survival without fairly intensive
beekeeper intervention. It is time to forget about widespread chemical use
while there is still some usefulness in the materials concerned.

Yes, it will mean more labour intensive methods... and that will hit the
large scale commercial organisations hard, but the more these methods are
explored the better we will become at using them.

This is the work that we all should have started when varroa first hit, so
that we could properly make use of the window that chemicals bestow. Had we
all done that, then we would be better placed today as our chemicals run out
of magic bullet properties.

Beekeeping has never been a business of high profits, but making ANY profit
in future may mean a complete rethink on colony numbers, honey and wax
prices and pollination fees.

It is time to start practising some of the fringe treatment schemes, that
are often laughed at, after all we may find a "GEM" in one of them, it
certainly will not hurt to have a battery of methods that have been widely
trialled in different areas with different strains.

The opinion stated is mine, but it is not held in a "humble" fashion.

Best Regards & 73s, Dave Cushman G8MZY
Beekeeping and Bee Breeding Website
http://website.lineone.net/~dave.cushman

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