Keith Malone wrote:
> Small cell, The Lusby,s and several beekeepers in the USA and Europe have
> done just as you have suggested above using small cells. Though their hard
> work and results are negated. When is a caring and honest researcher going
> to research small cell methods correctly and completely?
Perhaps when A) one gets interested, B) one becomes convinced that it is
credible as a thory and it is fiscally responsible to spend the tax
payers money on it or C) one of the adherants to the small cell
philosophy buck up and sink the time or money into it. Just because
some might want small cell to be a panacea (and it would be nice it is
turns out to be) doesn't mean that anyone else has to devote time and
resources to ivestgating it. It would be nice, but it appears that at
this time the resource allocators (is that a word??) disagree and are
unwilling to sink the cash into a project.
Me - I will be trying it this spring, but I am willing to fiddle, and if
I think they do better than my bigger bees, I will say so, but alwways
with appropriate caveats that seem missing from much of the small cell cant.
> Really there has been no great strides made in the transportation industry
> in the past one hundred years.
Sure there has - in magnitude if not basic mode - but even those modes
have changed dramatically.
> Nothing has changed in our modes of
> transporting goods around the world, we only use boats, trains, trucks, and
> planes.
They are faster and larger - and there are many many many more of them.
Many times more goods and people are moved. This has changed the way
disease spreads in every species, not just honeybees.
>It's really only been in the last three or four decades that this
> spread of pest and disease has occurred in honey bees. Nothing has changed
> in our modes of transportation's in the past one hundred years, so maybe
> something has changed in the industry of beekeeping?
Maybe it has simply become more practical to move the bees around.
Surely you see that one can overnight packages in todays world that
would have taken weeks in the past, even 20 years ago. Todays jetliner
is lightyears ahead of what happened 50 or 100 years ago - and there are
loads more of them! To say the transportation industry is relatively
unchanged it a misrepresentation of the situation.
> Worker cell size has
> changed in the beekeeping industry in the past one hundred years. It has
> only taken a bit of time for beekeepers mistakes to finally catch up and
> bite them in the rear. Somebody has to be able to put two and two together
> to figure this simple equation out. This is not Rocket Science and you do
> not need a Ph.D. to figure it out.
At this point there has not been a direct causal relation ship
determined between larger cell size and the woes of the beekeeping
industry. There is considerable anectdotal, and valuable information to
suggest there may be a role, but it is not as simple as putting two and
two together. You are right, one does not need a PhD to figure this
out, a simple basic science class would do.
> What do honey bees do to combat SHB in it's place of origin, they immobilize
> the beetle by propolising it. But in it's place of origin honey bees are
> kept on small cells, therefore they have a greater division of labor and are
> not overwhelmed by the extra duty of invasive pest removal or
> immobilization.
Maybe.
> Also no chemicals are used to mess up the bees memory and
> motor functions either, so the bees remain smarter and can maneuver easier
> to complete their duties of dealing with these pest.
Maybe.
> Albeit this is only my
> opinion and is an anecdotal conclusion so I really do not expect the highly
> educated beekeeper to except my opinion but this is my take on it.
Oddly enough, many will.
> The father of American beekeeping, Langstroth, was not an Etymologist but
> was a mathematician with only a few colonies of honey bees in the beginning
> and was responsible for devising a method of beekeeping that allowed for
> beekeepers to be able to manage larger numbers of colonies than would have
> been possible before his time.
And mess around in those colonies, sometimes for good, and sometimes not.
> The answers to today's problems in beekeeping
> may come from an individual that is not schooled in etymology or scientific
> methods. The answers may come from a simple beekeeper who desires to be able
> to manage his/her colonies without the use of chemicals and therefore be
> able to manage more colonies than would have normally been possible. We
> should be exploring even methods devised by beekeepers who are not
> necessarily of the scientific community but even someone that is simply a
> beekeeper.
No one has ever suggested that this is not the case, it could very well
happen that way. What is interesting to me is that there is a very
vocal, but small group that rails against the scientific community
because it does not devote time, energy, and money to what this group
feels is an appropriate research avenue. Maybe it is time for the
small-cell folk to poney up and fund a real study? When such a thing is
suggested, what I have heard is "why should I fund anything, I already
know it works".
Sometimes I wonder it if is not a comfort to some that the research is
not done, gives them the right to say - "but you haven't proven my
theory wrong - so it must be right!"
Keith
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