Man oh Man do I feel blessed to do beekeeping in Hawaii where we have
no pest or disease of honey bees that require the use of all of the
different concoctions and variations of chemicals and medications.

       I am very worried about all of the continued dialogue about the use
of chemicals, pesticides, medications in compliance of labels and outside of
compliance of labels. None of this will serve the industry very well when
the "TODAY" show or "GOOD MORNING AMERICA " TV shows pick up on all  of the
possibilities and do a documentary on the abuses and subsequent
contamination of US and Canadian honey.

      I was shocked when last year BEE Culture had a cartoon strip making
light of the abuse of the strips with a beekeeper harvesting a box of honey
and realizing that he had left the strips in all year. The honey consumers
of the world buy honey with a perception that they are buying a healthy
product that is good for them. If we keep talking about these abuses it will
not surprise me if mainland US and Canadian honey gets a bad reputation and
loses all of its market share.

        Instead of putting all of this energy into sharing each other's
secret witches brew better ideas for chemical use why don't the bee keepers
band together to get control of the National Honey Board away from the
packers who have no concern for the beekeepers. Our US government officials
would tell us that the NHB is for the betterment of the bee keeping
industry. USDA motto is " Protecting America's Agriculture"  For what ever
reason bee keepers with their feelings of impotence when trying to deal with
the US government continue to sit back and let the honey packers control the
NHB. If bee keepers got control we could demand that the NHB promote US
honey and not just subsidize honey packers who look for the cheapest honey
available without concern for where it comes from or what is in the honey.
Why do you think that the honey testing requirements are so loose. The
packers while dropping their lobby money all around Washington, D.C. say
that this is an Industry issue and should be self policed. Then they buy
honey from all over the world and offer US honey producers peanuts for their
honey and do zero or little testing because no testing is required and their
position is that they pay lots of product liability insurance premiums and
they do need to test.

       Sorry for staying quite for so long and I finally got enough of the
talk about the many ways that contamination could be getting started by
mainland US and Canadian honey producers. If any of you would like some
honey that you can eat and feed to your children without fear or concern of
chemicals drop me a line. line.

                                All the Best to the Honey Bees
                                    Walter Patton--Hilo,  HAWAII
1-808-964-5401
                                      www.HawaiiHoney.Com
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