I said:
>  Actually, if you read the study, they state that the supers can be
>  marked, then the hives inspected. If the apiary is clean, then the
>  supers can be unmarked. If a hive is diseased, then you will know
>  which supers are contaminated. This would represent very little
>  trouble at all. You can number the hives and mark the hive number on
>  the super with a crayon.

At 7:58 -0700 1/23/02, BEEHAVER wrote:
>I gather, then, you have never worked in a commercial outfit that runs hives
>up and down across distances greater than the breadth or length of NZ and
>sometimes hires illerate or semi-literate labour, and uses custom
>exctracting facilities or swaps equipment, or puts hives into that
>500-mile-long beeyard they call California almond pollination?

Actually I know many California beekeepers, having lived there most
of my life. I worked for at least six. I have seen all types, some
excellent bee-men and some slobs.

James said, and I agree, the central point of the New Zealand article
was that beekeeping practices  have to change. I think he would agree
that the use of illiterate help and swapping equipment are hardly
good beekeeping practices, regardless of how common.

If you have time to take a super off a hive, and place it on a pallet
or truck, I suppose you might have time to write a number on it.
Maybe not. But if you don't have that much time, obviously you don't
have time to inspect hives anyway, except dead ones (if that) and you
no doubt have bees like Lloyd describes:

>I have personally seen commercial, migratory beekeeping operations with
>brood nests full of AFB scale.  Yet these operations regularly pass
>inspections needed to migrate.  The justification is that there is "no
>active AFB, and if we kept out all hives with scale we would close the
>migratory operations."

And if that is the actual state of commercial beekeeping today, then
they will never be rid of drugs because they no doubt have millions
of spores in every hive. They pass the inspections! What kind of
inspection is that? But that isn't beekeeping anyway. *That* is bee
having.

Please remember, this list is called: Informed Discussion of
Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology.