This apology thread seems to be getting pretty nasty. Why is it,
when things go wrong we have to find SOMEONE to blame. We're all guilty
of it (sorry Ron). Maybe it just makes us feel better to kick a dog who
won't bite back. Let's think about the real problem with the industry. I
only know how things are in this country, but I assume agriculture is
the same world-wide.
    Woodie Guthrie said it better than I can. He was there when the
problem was more obvious than now.
    "The farmer is the man, the farmer is the man, who holds all the
credit until fall
    Then they take him by the hand, and they lead him from his land
    And the taxes on the farmer feed us all."
I believe our formost problem, in the honey industry, is low honey
prices. The price we receive for bulk honey has dropped $.40/lb in the
last two years. When the price went up to $1.00/lb for white honey, we
all had $$ in our pockets at the end of the year. Yeah, the cost of
everything we use went up too. Queens went to $10, Foundation and
woodenware up significantly, etc. That was ok with me. I was willing to
share. Give everybody a slice of the pie. We even had $$ to pay the
lawyers to fight the dumping of cheap Chinese honey. The cost of Apistan
didn't seem too bad, and even the $$ we have to pay the National Honey
Promotion Board didn't stick in the gut so bad. Now that the price we
get for bulk honey has fallen to $.60/lb or less, things have changed.
Not so much $$ in your pockets this year, eh mate? Doesn't seem like the
price of our supplies has gone down, has it?? The assesment we pay to
the NHPB is approaching 2% of our gross. Labor and insurance costs are
out of sight. And now Bayer has a new anti-varroa strip they'll put on
the market if enough of us are willing to pay their higher
price(backwards over the barrell again). I checked the price of honey in
the local grocery stores yesterday. Highest prices for jarred honey I've
ever seen. Who's getting all the $$$.
    Desperate people do desperate things. If there was enough profit to
be made, we would have enough $$$ to solve our problems, or at least
work on them intellegently. We wouldn't feel it necessary to blame the
guy on the other side of the community for our problems.
    Let's put our heads together, and not bang them together. Woodie
would certainly be disappointed!
                            Hoping to go in a positive direction soon.
                            Michael Palmer
                            St. Albans, Vermont, USA
                            45n 73w