What do you think?
 
Bees for Nagorno-Karabakh (Azerbaijan)
 
A news story from the "Fresno Bee" on Christmas day caught my attention as it
reported on a local non-profit groups efforts to rebuild the honeybee
population from 250 hives by giving 3,000 more hives, package bees?, to 300
local Armenian farmers in Nagorno-Karabakh, a breakaway republic from
Azerbaijan with a history of war supported with guns and bullets by Russian and
Armenia.
 
Many years of  War was given for the loss of bees, war with blood and bullets,
not the war with bee disease, pests, or predators as we know it?
 
The cost for a one year program would be $1,000,000.US, with over half coming
from the US government from the "Save the Children" funds which a connection I
can not see unless the children are going to receive the honeybees and
training? The balance of the money will come from the local non-profit Armenian
group with three local bee experts who are not named and help from the
University of California including instructions on keeping the bees which has
no parallel between Nagorno-Karabakh and California beekeeping or conditions?
 
 
All this sounds too good, but looking at the history and current events some
more questions become apparent.
 
The break away area of Nagorno-Karabakh (Azerbaijan) is about the size of
Delaware, has a mostly ethnic Armenian population of 160,000 and is named for
the black soil of the Caucasus mountains it is in.
 
Beekeeping never has been a main source of farm income for the population but
at one time they did have about 3,500 hives which only produced 30 tons of
honey in a normal year and much less in others. Hardly enough to provide honey
for their own population but according to those who would restart beekeeping
enough to provide $500.00 in annual income to the 300 newly trained beekeepers,
they would start with only an average of 10 hives each.  One can only assume
that this income is after costs and even then an investment of 1 million $$
seems high for the expected returns and considering that the new beekeepers
will be expected to give 10% of the finished product to the poor may exceed the
real profit from the beekeepers labor and expense.
 
What do some of you with more experience then I think? I know from being an
experienced beekeeper and watching beekeepers all my life many would tell you
if they were given a million dollars they would keep bees until it was all
gone. Do you think this is a viable program or could big money like this be
used in other ways that would help many more people if it not used to buy more
guns and ammunition anyway? Today a million bucks would buy a lot of honey from
China or Honey-analog from India which may be the same thing if you believe
what some are saying and this could sweeten the lives of many children in any
country.
 
You can rest assured that what ever we say or think is not going to change
anything but it would be interesting to look back at it in the next century to
see if a cottage bee industry still exists in Nagorno-Karabakh, if it is still
around then. I hope it does and is producing much honey and you all can call me
the OLd Cynic Drone who would question the honorable intentions of our US
government and some good local people trying to help those I think would rather
fight then help themselves including their own children.
 
Chow, the OLd Drone
 
For the News story on
Bees for Nagorno-Karabakh see
http://beenet.com/bnews.htm