From MAILER-DAEMON Sat Feb 28 11:00:33 2009 Return-Path: <> X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.1.8 (2007-02-13) on industrial X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-83.9 required=2.4 tests=ADVANCE_FEE_1,ADVANCE_FEE_2, AWL,MAILTO_TO_SPAM_ADDR,NORMAL_HTTP_TO_IP,SPF_HELO_PASS,USER_IN_WHITELIST autolearn=disabled version=3.1.8 X-Original-To: adamf@IBIBLIO.ORG Delivered-To: adamf@IBIBLIO.ORG Received: from listserv.albany.edu (unknown [169.226.1.24]) by metalab.unc.edu (Postfix) with ESMTP id E5A4D4909D for ; Sat, 28 Feb 2009 10:52:22 -0500 (EST) Received: from listserv.albany.edu (listserv.albany.edu [169.226.1.24]) by listserv.albany.edu (8.13.8/8.13.8) with ESMTP id n1SFhrqC016524 for ; Sat, 28 Feb 2009 10:52:22 -0500 (EST) Date: Sat, 28 Feb 2009 10:52:18 -0500 From: "University at Albany LISTSERV Server (14.5)" Subject: File: "BEE-L LOG0712C" To: adamf@IBIBLIO.ORG Message-ID: Content-Length: 128427 Lines: 2692 ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 16 Dec 2007 04:55:30 -0700 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: C Hooper Subject: Apitherapists to Offer Workshop at US Beekeeping Convention MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/plain; CHARSET=US-ASCII Apitherapists to Offer Workshop at US Beekeeping Convention http://apitherapy.blogspot.com/2007/12/apitherapists-to-offer-workshop-at-us.html On January 11, apitherapist Reyah Carlson American Apitherapy Society Vice President Frederique Keller will offer an apitherapy workshop at the American Beekeeping Federation annual convention in Sacramento, Calif... ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Dec 2007 15:30:14 GMT Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "waldig@netzero.net" Subject: Re: Dance Language, Revisited Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit >>...they could not lead recruits across water until Lindauer strung a rope with leaves across a pond, which the bees used to make a scent trail. Most interesting what these stingless bees do. I'd think the honey bees' dance communication (please don't reply with your contraty views on bee dances unless an R&R experiment supports it beyond the shadow of a doubt :), is more efficient and allows foragers more leaway in adjusting the flight path based on wind conditions, need to go around passing objects etc. >>He set a feeding station on a tower about 65 feet up. Stingless bees could bring recruits to it (88 bees in 30 minutes). Honey bees could not bring recruits to the top of the tower. This is interesting as well. I'd love to examine how bees in Manhattan communicate forage availability. >>The dance language only contains horizontal (2 dimensional) information and so completely fails when the food source is not on or near the ground. I'd suggest bee dances work in 3D with a possible qualifier that the vertical component works if the hive is positioned higher than the forage. I assume here, since most city hives are on roof tops, downward vertical foraging is no problem because the bees can traverse the horizontal distance to flowers and then descend on them. [But how do they find their way back up to the hive???? :)] On the other hand, Lindauer suggests it might be a problem for a ground level hive to locate flowers in rooftop gardens... but who would let me place a bee hive at ground level in Manhattan for an experiment!! :) >>They have no way of indicating a food source is far above the ground, so the recruits follow the direction to the base of the tower and look there. Lindauer's case is somewhat unique in that it had a single tower in a flat (?) landscape. We know bees don't starve in seemingly barren Manhattan or in certain mountain ranges. Waldemar ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 16 Dec 2007 19:36:36 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: S Wilson Subject: Re: Dance Language, Revisited In-Reply-To: <20071214.073014.22382.0@webmail11.dca.untd.com> Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Honeybees have little problems finding tree blooms. Around here they're pretty high. S Wilson, Mid VA, USA ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 16 Dec 2007 21:57:01 -0600 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Lionel Evans Subject: Re: Dance Language, Revisited MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1"; reply-type=original Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Honey bees in North Alabama find popular tree blooms at sometimes as high as 50' or more. Lionel North AL. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 17 Dec 2007 05:06:09 -0800 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Mike Stoops Subject: Re: Dance Language, Revisited In-Reply-To: <20071214.073014.22382.0@webmail11.dca.untd.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit > >>He set a feeding station on a tower about 65 feet > up. Stingless bees could bring recruits to it (88 > bees in 30 minutes). Honey bees could not bring > recruits to the top of the tower. . Most tree canopies start at 20 feet or lower above the ground. If the source were blooms on trees the bees definitely find those blooms; i.e. red maple, black locus, tulip poplar, ti ti, sourwood, to name a few. These are vertical sources and the bees definitely find those. Mike in LA ____________________________________________________________________________________ Looking for last minute shopping deals? Find them fast with Yahoo! Search. http://tools.search.yahoo.com/newsearch/category.php?category=shopping ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 17 Dec 2007 08:37:54 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Aaron Morris Subject: proposals for research related to improving honey bee health sought MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sorry for the late notice, the application deadline is only 3 days away! The North American Pollinator Protection Campaign is seeking proposals for research related to improving honey bee health. Funding for these grants has been generously provided by Burt's Bees (http://www.pollinator.org/Honeybee_Health.htm). Selection of proposals will be conducted by members of the Honey Bee Health Improvement Task Force. In total, $32,000 will be available, and will support 2-4 research proposals. Funds must be used within a one year period. Focused, targeted projects with a high likelihood of providing tangible results that can be applied to improving honey bee health are preferred. The HBHI Task Force has identified four priority areas for funding: 1. Effects of climate or environmental variables on: a) plants, especially nectar and pollen quantity and quality; and/or b) honey bee physiology and/or colony health 2. Effects of nutrition on honey bee physiology and/or colony health 3. Effects of sublethal doses of pesticides (including miticides) on honey bee physiology and/or colony health 4. Genetic stock improvement: Identification of traits that can be targeted for selection to improve honey bee health, especially tolerance or resistance of pathogens or pests; development of rapid screening and assay methods for these genetic traits North American Pollinator Protection Campaign 423 Washington St. 5th Fl. San Francisco, CA 94111 Telephone: 415.362.1137 Fax: 415.362.3070 Proposals should be 2-3 pages in length, with sufficient background and methodology to ascertain the importance and feasibility of the studies. A detailed budget should be included; this budget should include funds for the principal investigator to attend the annual NAPPC International Summit in Washington, DC to present the results of the research. As a nonprofit organization, NAPPC does not pay overhead on funded research grants. Please send your proposal by electronic mail to Jennifer Tsang (jt@coevolution.org) by December 20, 2007. Contact Barry Thompson (BHT1113@aol.com) with questions. The proposals will be evaluated by members of the HBHI Task Force, and funding decisions will be made by February 1, 2008. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 17 Dec 2007 11:16:14 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Hubers Subject: Dance Language, Revisited In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed; x-avg-checked=avg-ok-509D37AE Dear BEE-L Peter Borst and others have been discussing stingless bee communication of location of food sources, especially in the rain forest canopy where the vertical component is so necessary. Peter cited a 1971 book by Lindauer. BEE-L readers should also be directed to the much more recent work of Prof. James Nieh, now at UCSD. He has shown that sound and vibrations also play a vital role in communicating elevation information. Here's a quote from Prof. Nieh's web site "A recruiting forager produces a series of pulsed sounds when she unloads her food to other bees and when she begins to make clockwise and counterclockwise dance movements (Nieh 1998B). During the food-unloading phase, she produces longer sound pulses for a food source on the canopy floor than for one 40 m up in the canopy. During the dance phase, sound pulse duration is positively correlated with increasing distance of the food source from the nest (Nieh & Roubik 1998). Thus M. panamica foragers appear to use sounds to communicate food height and distance." Professor Nieh gave a wonderful talk on his work some years ago (when he was at Harvard as a post doc) to our Bee Club, the Middlesex County Beekeepers Association. Ernie Huber -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.503 / Virus Database: 269.17.4/1187 - Release Date: 12/16/07 11:36 AM ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 17 Dec 2007 11:40:59 -0600 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Dave Hamilton Subject: Re: Dance Language, Revisited MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Maeterlink trained bees into his second story office and there were several studies up onto bridges ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 17 Dec 2007 18:53:05 +0000 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Gavin Ramsay Subject: Re: Dance Language, Revisited MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Spot on Ernie. For anyone that has missed his talk (and that includes me) you can see James Nieh describing the studies in person here: http://www.ucsd.tv/sciencematters/lesson2-bees-teach.shtml The videos aren't working for me at the moment, but try them again at a quieter time and you'll see the man explain all. all the best Gavin ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 17 Dec 2007 18:41:10 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "Peter L. Borst" Subject: Dance Language, Revisited MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline My contention was that there was no vertical component in the dance language. I never said bees don't forage in trees! Obviously, bees find flowers in trees and they do this in part by their sense of smell. As I said before, if they fly above the canopy, they would have no trouble locating flower patches both visually and by the odor. Also, it is known that if the nectar plants are especially abundant and odoriferous, the information in the dances is generally ignored. (see reference at end of email) Many years ago I went hiking on Mt. Shasta using only a map. This was not a topographical map, in that it did not indicate elevations, but only features such as streams and a few peaks and ridges. We had picked out a stream to camp by and proceeded to attempt to hike there. When we got to the actual location, we saw the stream from atop a cliff, in the bottom of a thousand foot chasm. We ended up camping on a barren mountainside with only melted snow for water, unable to reach the stream below. Without the third dimension, the map failed at that point. A flat map is useful for many or most situations but it would fail to show whether a given address, for example, was on the ground or 50 stories up in an apartment building. So in addition to the street address, one would need the floor number (vertical component) to find the apartment. If one can visualize what a bee sees in traveling out, one can see that given distance and direction, it could find most types of forage. Just getting nearby would be adequate, if the floral source was fragrant and/or abundant. The feeding source on the tower was neither. The bees flew near the ground and could not find the feeder at the top of the tower. Probably if the feeder was at the bottom of the forest floor where the bees had to fly over the canopy, they would have the same problem. The point I was trying to make was that in certain situations, a two dimensional representation will fail. It failed for the bees at the tower and it failed for me at the precipice. James Nieh's work is very interesting but wasn't about Apis mellifera at all, so I don't see how it is relevant, except to show how the height information *could* be encoded into a bee signal. So far as is known, it isn't present in the Apis mellifera dance. From his web site: > Melipona panamica foragers can communicate the three-dimensional location of food sources. To achieve this, foragers use a combination of mechanisms. Results from a series of removal experiments (segregating all feeder-experienced foragers from potential recruits as they left the nest) suggest that direction is communicated outside the nest whereas height and distance are communicated inside the nest. > A recruiting forager produces a series of pulsed sounds when she unloads her food to other bees and when she begins to make clockwise and counterclockwise dance movements (Nieh 1998B). During the food-unloading phase, she produces longer sound pulses for a food source on the canopy floor than for one 40 m up in the canopy. During the dance phase, sound pulse duration is positively correlated with increasing distance of the food source from the nest. Thus M. panamica foragers appear to use sounds to communicate food height and distance. * * * Honeybee colonies achieve fitness through dancing Gavin Sherman & P. Kirk Visscher During summer and autumn, there was no significant difference in the food collected, as measured by mass changes, when colonies did and did not have directional information from the dance. However, in conditions like those in winter in this study, communication of food source location does increase a colony's food intake. The evolution of recruitment communication in social insects is presumably steered by whether, for particular colony sizes and habitats, a recruitment mechanism increases food collection more than it decreases it. -- Peter L. Borst Danby, NY USA 42.35, -76.50 ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 17 Dec 2007 14:42:13 GMT Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "waldig@netzero.net" Subject: Re: Dance Language, Revisited Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit >>He set a feeding station on a tower about 65 feet up. I wonder how the stingless scouts found the feeding station in the first place... I assume they are accustomed to flying up and down tall objects/trees in search of food in their native habitat. In the dense tropics very little sun reaches the ground and most of the forage is likely to be in the tall tree canopies. Was this experiment valid? You know aerospace engineers had also claimed for a long time the honey bee wing design could not result in flight... ;-))) Would you know if in the experiment the food source on top of the tower was unscented? Another question that should be asked: was there something else blooming in the area closer to the ground during the experiment that attracted the bees more? Certainly, bees in Manhattan don't starve and surplus NYC honey can be purchased in stores [at rather extravagant prices:)]. I'd say this experiment was flawed if it aimed to prove or disprove dance language for vertical food location. Bees use a combination of methods and factors for food location and taking one component shed limited light. It's great that stingless bees do well in tropic by scenting the trail to the food source in trees that can exceed 100 ft. I hope my bees don't acquire the trait of marking across busy roadways. Pesticide kills would pale in comparison with road kills. :) Waldemar ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 07:06:20 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: =?UTF-8?Q?Peter_Borst?= Subject: Re: Dance Language, Revisited Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Quoted material: > With all the elements in place, however, these bees [Melipona panamica] seem able to communicate a location in three dimensions, Nieh points out. In contrast, honeybees don't seem to indicate height. The difference may reflect their habitats. Stingless bees forage in tropical forests where they may dine on flowers blooming high in the canopy or fruit that has fallen to the floor. Most honeybees live in temperate regions instead and gather nectar and pollen relatively near the ground. > Both the honeybee and stingless-bee systems, Nieh notes, mix presumably simple methods, like scents, with fancier ones, like specialized motion. "There are many ways information can get garbled," he says. "It's good to be redundant." > The amount of information that honeybees, bumblebees, and stingless bees exchange inside the nest has inspired Nieh to speculate on the advantage of elaborate communications. The supposedly simpler methods, trailing scent droplets like bread crumbs, for example, could tip off competitors as well as the crew from the home nest. What happens inside a nest, however, becomes much harder for foreigners to observe. > Advantageous as that shift inside might be, it does require some way to abstractly represent the larger world. Such a system might develop under pressures of intense competition from other hives, Nieh speculates. Or, to put it another way, representational language could be just one way of countering espionage. see: http://www.sciencenews.org/pages/sn_arc99/4_3_99/bob1.htm ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 13:16:47 -0800 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Paul Cherubini Subject: Burt's Bees Donates $32,000 to Improve Bee Health MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/burts-bees-47121502 Corporate Love in the Time of Colony Collapse Disorder Burt's Bees and the North American Pollinator Protection Campaign are looking for a few good scientists to help improve the ailing health of the honeybee. Burt's Bees, the maker of "earth-friendly natural" personal care products, is contributing $32,000, and the North American Pollinator Protection Campaign's Honeybee Health Improvement Task Force will leverage its scientific expertise in choosing the 2-4 projects most worthy of a cash infusion. The money will benefit research that focuses on one of four things: the effect of climate on nectar or pollen quality and other environmental variables, the effects of nutrition on bee or colony health, the health effects of pesticides, or ways to improve the genetic stock of honeybees. The goal is to define real-world techniques that will improve honeybee health at a time when an unknown agent (or some combination of known agents) is causing unprecedented death in a phenomenon called colony collapse disorder. Even before colony collapse disorder reared its ugly head (scattering bees from their hives, to which they never returned), honeybees had experienced years of decline as a result of a series of viruses, parasites and other problems. If you're a scientist with a great idea, go to Pollinator.org for more information. If you're just concerned about bees, take heart that maybe some sorely needed help is on the way. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 17:49:16 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Brian Fredericksen Subject: "pimping bees" Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit An article that supports my own views on sustainability in Agriculture and what's wrong with migratory beekeeping. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/16/magazine/16wwln-lede-t.html? ei=5124&en=6fe50addedc76f38&ex=1355461200&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink&page wanted=all New York Times December 16, 2007 THE WAY WE LIVE NOW Our Decrepit Food Factories By MICHAEL POLLAN excerpts "We’re asking a lot of our bees. We’re asking a lot of our pigs too. That seems to be a hallmark of industrial agriculture: to maximize production and keep food as cheap as possible, it pushes natural systems and organisms to their limit, asking them to function as efficiently as machines. When the inevitable problems crop up — when bees or pigs remind us they are not machines — the system can be ingenious in finding “solutions,” whether in the form of antibiotics to keep pigs healthy or foreign bees to help pollinate the almonds. But this year’s solutions have a way of becoming next year’s problems. That is to say, they aren’t “sustainable.”" "Whenever we try to rearrange natural systems along the lines of a machine or a factory, whether by raising too many pigs in one place or too many almond trees, whatever we may gain in industrial efficiency, we sacrifice in biological resilience. The question is not whether systems this brittle will break down, but when and how, and whether when they do, we’ll be prepared to treat the whole idea of sustainability as something more than a nice word." ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 21:01:51 -0600 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Bob Harrison Subject: Re: "pimping bees" In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1"; reply-type=original Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Brian said: > An article that supports my own views on sustainability in Agriculture and > what's wrong with > migratory beekeeping. Our nation ( and many writers for the New York Times) is rapidly becoming a nation of finger pointers. The article solves what? What good is an article without at least a possible solution to the problem Michael thinks he sees? Michael does seem to have most his facts correct at least on the bee part. Wish he would have listed a source. However on the drug resistant staph the article would have been better if he would have pointed out that disinfectant will not solve the problem and sterilization of old hospitals is not possible. The problem will increase. Old hospitals will continue to be reservoirs for staph. "Pimping bees is the whole of the almond business for these beekeepers since almond honey is so bitter as to be worthless" If I were to guess I would say Mr.. Michael Pollan has read one of my five articles on the Australian bee import or one of the several on almond pollination. He lists no sources but a couple things he said sounds like information from my first article. in one of my articles I said migratory beekeepers are like ladies of the night as both" come in the night and charge for their services" Also in two articles I spoke of almond honey being bitter and worthless as a honey. Sincerely, Bob Harrison I doubt beekeepers will ever serve time for "pimping" honey bees. -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2007 14:17:19 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Brian Fredericksen Subject: Re: "pimping bees" Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On Tue, 18 Dec 2007 21:01:51 -0600, Bob Harrison wrote: > >Our nation ( and many writers for the New York Times) is rapidly becoming a >nation of finger pointers. The article solves what? What good is an article >without at least a possible solution to the problem Michael thinks he sees? > people read that stuff and some make changes in what they eat or how they spend their money. Michael Pollan is the poster boy for the eat local movement and a lot of people are interested to hear what he has to say. the politics of beekeeping and honey is changing and IMO migratory beekeeping and imported honey is being lumped into the same category as feedlot pork, Yuck!. people are and will be asking is that honey from china or a migratory operation? no thanks I'll get the non-industrial, more sustainable version from a local beekeeper. IMO the answers are obvious. stop raising pigs in an inhumane way crammed into feedlots. stop planting massive monoculture crops which require pollination services that do not exist . problem is Bob some folks like you don't like the answers. you seem more interested in importing bees then fixing the problems we created as an industry. its all about the money and the short term isn't it? I and other like minds can only hope that these systems break down from the fact that they are unsustainable. no one will be going hungry or few will be out of a job if those new almond plantings go un-pollinated. this is not a national crisis to get those trees pollinated for the investors to cash their nuts in. IMO the chaos created by the mass movement of bees each year is creating a national crisis and negatively affecting many, many beeks. So bring on the articles like the one I posted, get the information out there for consumers to make their own choices and influence state and federal ag policy thats how we will see some changes occur. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2007 14:56:26 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Brian Fredericksen Subject: propolis and honeybee immunity Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Kim Flottum has been sending out via email very timely and useful updates concerning honeybees and CCD called "Catch The Buzz" If you are not a subscriber you should bee but here is a link to his latest on CCD research and Marla Spivaks thoughts if you are not. http://home.ezezine.com/1636/1636-2007.12.18.17.31.archive.html a partial excerpt I found of interest There were nearly a dozen speakers on the subject, but here I will only discuss a very few. Marla Spivak elegantly stated that we shouldn’t be able to keep bees. There’s just too many things going wrong – varroa is affecting all manner of honey bee health issues, poor pollen is becoming more common, pesticides, especially the new neonics are everywhere and anywhere you look, and the economics of beekeeping in general, essentially, suck (my term, not hers). To support this she read a laundry list of things going on...mites, contaminated wax comb, reduced forage, poor nutrition, pesticides, poor return on honey, increased acreage of pollination-needing crops, increased dollars for pollination contracts, lots of moving .... stir and add just one more thing and....poof. She added one glimmer of hope though, and it was worth the trip. One of the things that has been discovered with the study of the honey bee genome is that honey bees have fewer than half of the genes other insects have for fighting off diseases and pests...those immune genes you keep hearing about. But honey bees have propolis. And propolis fights off pests and diseases...maybe that’s why bees are the way they are, gene-wise. So...looking at propolis a little closer, Marla and other scientists are finding that this magic substance has considerable capacity to fight off problems...honey bee problems and human problems. More is on the way, for both propolis and immune genes we’re told. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2007 19:32:52 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: =?windows-1252?Q?Steve_Noble?= Subject: Re: "pimping bees" Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Brian Fredericksen writes: "I and other like minds can only hope that these systems break down from the fact that they are unsustainable." Not sure what to make of a statement like that, Brian. As far as beekeeping goes if they are unsustainable then by definition they are going to break down. If they are sustainable then why would you want them to break down? You could either be wishing misfortune on someone who bears no malice toward you, and if so shame on you, or you honestly think that if migratory beekeepers all go away all your beekeeping problems will go away with them in which case I think you are fooling yourself. In any case you do your cause more harm than good by placing yourself on some loftier plane than others who are perhaps not motivated as much by greed as by a desire to make a living by providing what many good folks feel is a useful service. It’s that holier than thou attitude that turns off the very people you ought to be trying to convince. I hope people do not avoid reading Michael Pollan’s books because they feel turned off and maybe even insulted by your over simplistic diatribes. I suggest you read Barack Obama’s book, “The Audacity of Hope”, to learn something about how to carry on a dialogue with people who have different views than you do. He places a lot of importance on the need to see the world through the eyes of those with whom we disagree. A clearer less judgmental understanding of where people are coming from can take us a long way toward finding not only the answers to what is sustainable, but how to get there. In terms of what is or is not sustainable, I think it might be worth mentioning that in a sense nothing is sustainable, and by that I mean that even without the presence of billions of human beings on the planet, everything is always changing. It can be as dangerous to ignore that fact as it is to ignore the impacts we humans bring to bear on what stability there is within ecological systems. For us, sustainability requires adaptability to change. So it does not automatically go without saying that the smartest thing is to try and rigidly adopt or impose some old time means of production and distribution in the world that exists right now. You have to make the case that such a system is sustainable just as much as you have to make the case that the other system is not. It’s great to promote and try things like small scale organic agriculture and local public markets, but what level of guarantee is there that those systems will fulfill all our needs all the time? Lots of natural and man made events can disrupt small systems on small and fairly large scales. Resilience may be a quality of such systems but it is not guaranteed by them just as it is not necessarily absent or guaranteed in large scale systems. Small scale systems have their own unique vulnerabilities just as large scale systems have theirs. We have been observing these large scale systems for quite a while now, about one generation, really, and their flaws are being exposed. If, or as, we become more dependent on smaller more localized systems of food production, we may well see that there are weaknesses inherent in them as well. In the real world scenario, everything will be moving between extremes of small and large scale in search of an optimal point of sustainability. You will never know exactly when you are there or how long you will be able to stay there. You can never just hold on to an idea and take it for granted that sticking to it will keep you sustainable. You have to constantly be reading the signs of change and adapting. Good luck and may the force be with you. Steve Noble ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2007 22:11:42 -0600 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Bob Harrison Subject: Re: "pimping bees" In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1"; reply-type=original Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hello Brian & All, > > Yuck!. people are and will be > asking is that honey from china or a migratory operation? The hard fact is the number of commercial beekeepers has dropped each year since WW2 in the U.S. half as many hives now as then. 70% of U.S. honey sold in stores is imported. Why? Because the U.S. beekeeping industry has not been able to supply the demand even if it wanted to. Lumping U.S. migratory honey in with honey from China does not seem right. We sell our honey "really raw" in the drum (curently for around 95cents a pound). All the large packers are testing each shipment. None of the small local beekeepers get their honey tested. Which is really safer. In another forum a small beekeeper said he fills his "really raw" jars right off the extractor and sells for around $8 a pound. Less effort than all the beekeepers I know but charging eight times the price. Some crystallizes so hard in the jar the buyer has trouble getting out of the container. Is not what he is doing all about the money. 800% mark up over others "really raw" honey. no thanks I'll get the non-industrial, > more sustainable version from a local beekeeper. Like I said you will get your price and sell all you produce in your area if you are willling to direct market your crop. When you get larger then those prices either reduce or like a friend which always wants higher than the going priceyou have a whole warehouse full of drums of honey. Honey is a comodity like sugar, corn, soybeans and other crops. I have got a shed full of 55 gallon drums under CCC USDA honey loan. All the honey is "really raw" and unfiltered. When honey was on the USDA-ARS watch list my honey was tested and was free of contamination of any kind. How can you say your honey is better than mine.? > IMO the answers are obvious. stop raising pigs in an inhumane way crammed > into feedlots. stop > planting massive monoculture crops which require pollination services that > do not exist . Pollinating almonds is not a priority for me. However when the almond pollination fees rise my interest increases. I am not a hobby beekeeper and need cash flow. Supply and demand is the main reason fees are up. Almond growers know they need to try and atract new beekeepers to bring bees to California. The California raisen growers used to laugh at the almond industry until imported raisens stole the market. Now the raisen growers are bull dozing grapes and planting almonds to survive. Ten of thousands of acres of perfectly good raisen grapes were rotting on the vines once when I was in California because it cost more to harvest than the grapes sold for. desperate to stay in farming those growers planted almonds. Michael Pollan might understand things better if he spoke with an informed beekeeper. The raisen grape industry on the ropes is the number ONE reason for many new plantings of almonds. Everyday in California we would go to the restuarant for breakfast and visit with other beekeepers and growers ( almond,fruit, raisen and row crops) . My information comes first hand from those people. I am not sure exactly where Michael pollan gets his information. > problem is Bob some folks like you don't like the answers. you seem more > interested in importing > bees then fixing the problems we created as an industry. its all about the > money and the short > term isn't it? Whats wrong with the industry. Some beekeepers are having problems and others are not. Nothing new! researchers are after funding (which is not new!). The problem this year is for the most part this problem named CCD has not raised its ugly head. I have behind the scenes been involved with congress for years. sooner or later a congressman is going to ask the tough question: How many hives are crashing RIGHT NOW! I don't care about how many crashed last year! Getting funding without a provable crisus is problematic. Many reports/articles try to tie the problem to this summer /fall but not so! Even newspaper articles in our area this fall give the impression the problem is crisus now. > The year before almond pollination prices started their climb we took three semi loads to almonds ( not a huge amount) and each hive brought $45. Three large commercial beekeepers in our area had went under the year before. Almonds has been the life line to many operations. Those operations gone bankrupt were non migratory. They could not compete with foreign honey in their stores. Going migratory has been what has saved many an operation. Don S. ( N. Dakota) was one of the last of the large operations to go migratory. he told us at meetings that he could survive the foreign honey problem but found trying to survive on honey sales alone was not working. this is not a national crisis to get those trees pollinated for the > investors to cash their nuts in. True! However almonds has saved a dying California beekeeping industry. I almost felt sorry for California beeks on one of my first trips to almonds. Moving hives with swing loaders (Ulee jackson style) and old equipment trying to fall apart. Many resented us because of the new trucks etc. , excellent boxes and swingers. Now through current almond fees those guys have got their equipment in good boxes and many like gene brandi have moved to swingers and hives on pallets. Almond pollination has been a brite spot in beekeeping over the last five years. Sure randy oliver and myself have tried to make out of state beekeepers aware of the pitfalls and hidden risks but once armed with correct information then money can be made. IMO the chaos created by the mass movement of bees each year is > creating a national crisis and negatively affecting many, many beeks. Is CCD really a national crisis? Was it ever? How exactly has the movement to almonds effected your operation Brian? The folks from the Science article have got their CCD hypothesis on the ground trying to give CPR to the problem. The new angle is that there are two strains of IAPV and neither are like the Israel strain. Who really cares? Show us IAPV is a problem and then you get our attention> Those peoples hypothesis is not going to get many beekeepers attention unless the CCD issue is happening on even half the scale as last year. Which is is not! Many of the points Marla makes are not causing problems this year. To my amazement large operations with fluvalinate and coumaphos contaminated comb have got the best bees in years. Beekeepers I have been preaching to about changing all their comb (like I did) have got hives boiling with bees which in some cases look better than mine. I can't explain it! Maybe "Disappearing disease' was a better name than colony collapse disorder" as it seems this year CCD has disappeared. Those beekeepers on here from another forum know I have been asking all beekeepers to contact me if having problems. I have spoke with around 10 beekeepers which have attended their state meetings and few if any problems. despite what those seeking funds might say those with CCD issues were very vocal last fall at meetings! bob "has been known to pimp a few hives of bees" Ps. If beekeepers on the list hear of any confirmed CCD problems please email me with contact information. -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2007 07:02:25 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "Peter L. Borst" Subject: Sustainability MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline This issue of sustainability has been brought up again and again. What is generally overlooked is that almost everybody is for sustainability; only a few of us go into an endeavor hoping to make a quick buck and get out before the whole thing collapses. We want to succeed, and into the foreseeable future. The future, of course, is anything but foreseeable, and hence the problem. However, it is worth examining what a sustainable beekeeping system would consist of (instead of pointing fingers at the bad guys). To start, one would want colonies that required less attention than they seem to do now. For example: > Overall, Russian honey bees regulate the growth of varroa populations. Russian honey bees are resource-responsive. Russian colonies build large populations in spring when pollen becomes available. Consequently, their honey production is comparable. However, unlike Italian colonies they either slow down or completely stop brood production in response to a lack of nectar flow (Tubbs et al. 2003). This resource sensitivity may contribute to Russian honey bees' varroa resistance. > Also, Russian honey bees have many more injured and dead mites on the bottom boards of their hives, suggesting that they have a greater tendency to groom mites from their nests and nest mates (Rinderer et al. 2001). In contrast, susceptible Italian bees continue with their brood production under the same circumstances. Extended brood production offers a constant supply of hosts for mite reproduction. Ritter (1984) reported a 10-fold increase in mite population in southwestern Germany where the brood-rearing period is longer than in southeastern France (as cited by Fries et al. 1991). From: Growth of Varroa destructor Populations in Russian Honey Bee Colonies LILIA I. DE GUZMAN, THOMAS E. RINDERER, AND AMANDA M. FRAKE ANNALS OF THE ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA Vol. 100, no. 2 ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2007 13:34:18 -0000 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Mike Rowbottom Subject: Re: "pimping bees" In-Reply-To: <491AA33B61094389A0F9810052339F31@bobPC> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > -----Original Message----- > Bob Harrison wrote >Honey is a commodity This sentence is at the heart of the marketing issue. If your product cannot be distinguished from the competition, then the market forces will push you about. What is the Unique Selling Point of the product? If you don't have one then why not buy your competitor's product if it's comparable and cheaper? The New Zealand invention and promotion of UMF in honey is a classic marketing approach to differentiate your product. Perhaps we all have a Unique "X" factor, but X= manuka gives a honey that commands UK prices well over $US20 per pound retail. I wish X=Harrogate did the same!! Regards Mike Rowbottom HARROGATE North Yorkshire UK ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2007 09:30:19 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Aaron Morris Subject: National Bee Meeting in Sacramento MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit How many BEE-L members are planning to attend? Perhaps we can meet somewhere? Cheers, Aaron ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2007 09:32:04 -0600 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Bob Harrison Subject: Re: "pimping bees" In-Reply-To: <200712201334.HGI91223@C2bthomr05.btconnect.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1"; reply-type=original Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hello Mike & All, BEE-I is basically a hobby/sideline list and your thoughts do apply to those direct marketing their product. However when on the scale of the four beekeepers from my December ABJ article honey is simply a commodity sold bulk in drums or totes raw on the open market to the highest bidder. Sure floral source and other things enter into the equation but the factor which counts the most is the current price being paid by packers. Not many large beekeepers pack their own honey. I don't think I posted on BEE-L about the largest sale of honey being sold last spring the world has ever seen. Both the seller and buyer tried to keep the sale quiet but hard to do when the lines of semis outside honey warehouses are a half mile long. Adee Honey Farms had been sitting on drums of honey ( how many years?)waiting for the price to reach levels it did once a few years ago (highest in U.S. history) but never happened (despite closing import loopholes) so Richard sold his drums to packers. 11,000+ drums. The reported price was 1.10 to 1.12 a pound but although my information comes from reliable sources (all saying the same information) The buyer and seller are making no public statement although the Adees have confirmed the sale as the buyers have also. I said: >>Honey is a commodity Mike said: > This sentence is at the heart of the marketing issue. If your product > cannot be distinguished from the competition, then the market forces will > push you about. With all comodities its supply and demand. Doubt the situation will ever change in a world honey market for bulk raw unprocessed honey. > What is the Unique Selling Point of the product? Please do not confuse selling small amounts of honey with the discussion of comodity honey. Orange, Sourwood, Buckwheat or Tupelo honey can bring higher prices in the specialty honey packer market . But when supplies are high you can get docked because of the need for blending out those flavors in the regular market. Orange honey in Florida is at times docked if dark and strong in flavor and the whole state has a bumper crop. Way more than is needed for the specialty market. Richard Adee's plan to hold as much of his crop as long as he can waiting for the price to increase is common and has been pacticed for as long as commercial beekeeping has been around but there comes a time when you are forced for various reasons to clear the warehouse. Honey is fairly easy to store for a few years if moisture is correct. The CCC honey loan program was started to give commercial beekeepers cash flow while being able to wait up to nine months looking for a buyer. Before the loan program the packers stood at the beekeepers door with cheap offers knowing the beekeeper would have to sell a certain amount of drums to create fall cash flow. If you don't have one then > why not buy your competitor's product if it's comparable and cheaper? I can not tell you the number of marketing presentations I have sat through over the last four decades. One thing has always been the same: THE LOWEST PRICE HONEY ON THE SHELF SELLS THE MOST JARS. same with mustard & ketchup. The reason why Mustard & ketchup remain cheap. Get too much higher on the shelf than your competition and your sales will drop. Been there and done that. Many buyers simply scan the shelf and grab the lowest price bottle in the size they want. I spent a couple days once in a store watching and then asking buyers why they made their purchase. I found a different scenario in health food stores so I concentrated on selling honey in health food stores where my "local' label would help sell my product. I still do retail sales in stores but not on the scale i did at one time. > Perhaps we all have a > Unique "X" factor, but X= manuka gives a honey that commands UK prices > well > over $US20 per pound retail. I can tell you that any honey priced at $20 a pound in most grocery stores will not hold shelf space. Maybe in a health food store but sales will be limited. bob -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2007 10:50:08 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Bill Truesdell Subject: Re: Sustainability In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit The unfortunate truth about nature, is that it is not sustainable and never has been. Plants and animals became extinct long before mankind was present. We only look at our short term period and extrapolate it backwards and forward as if it always was so. From a long term view, beekeeping is in a minor shift while nature and we accommodate to the change. It is not the end of the world of beekeeping but only another of the many transitions beekeeping has taken over the ages. If we went by today's definition of sustainability, we would all be beelining and getting honey from trees- until someone wrote a book declaring that technique was not sustainable. But today's definition is only an invention to cover the organic movement. Sounds good but does not stand up well to inquiry. Bill Truesdell Bath, Maine ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2007 22:19:02 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: =?windows-1252?Q?Eric_Brown?= Subject: Re: Sustainability Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit The biggest problem I see with those who would exploit the word "sustainable" is that they fail to see any real need to compromise, especially with regard to their own cost of living. As Bob has recognized, it's possible to sell honey along the lines Brian advocates for $8+/lb, at least within limits. Similarly, we can eat pork from hogs rooting in the woods, eat nuts from geographically dispersed "polycultural" farms, and burn homegrown moonshine for our energy needs. The reason we don't is that all these practices are extremely dollar-inefficient. Just do the math: if mankind is going to devote five times as many manhours to producing every pound of honey/sweetener (and similarly every pound of pork, nuts, etc., etc.), mankind is going to have to consume a whole lot less of many other things in order to free up the extra manhours for honey production. This presents a secondary problem of requiring a bunch of people to give up their comfortable city jobs and accept getting stung while doing manual labor. Of course, for the individual beekeeper there are other solutions, most notably convincing rich, gullible yuppies to spend five times as much for his honey as he would be willing to pay himself. That doesn't solve any problems, but it does shift the cost away from the beekeeper onto rich yuppies. Shifting our problems onto other people is hardly this shining beacon of sustainability, though. In fact, shifting costs onto other people (e.g. proliferation of antibiotic resistant bacteria, pollution, inciting foreign wars, etc.) defines the very antithesis of sustainability. Yuppies may make for unsympathetic victims, but even if we embrace Robin Hood style stealing from the rich to give to the poor farmer/beekeeper, we've avoided the much bigger question of sustainability of how to go about feeding and providing for the other 6.99 billion people for whom price matters. I think there is, however, a fairly clear model of sustainability we can aspire to insofar as we're able to swim against the stream and make the necessary compromises. I see that model as one of a lot more small farms, and one of labor replacing chemical/industrial inputs. Specifically for beekeeping, I think that would mean a lot more sideline/small-scale commercial beekeepers keeping more or less permanent yards and deriving their beekeeping income primarily from honey sales. If farms in general were comparably dispersed and diversified, the need for migratory pollinators would practically disappear. I think that model is clear; how to get there, both individually and collectively, is the challenge. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2007 17:00:46 -0000 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Mike Rowbottom Subject: Re: "pimping bees" In-Reply-To: <53AEC97BDAF74C659973194A14270E5F@bobPC> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > -----Original Message----- > From: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu [mailto:BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu] On Behalf Of Bob > Harrison > Subject: Re: [BEE-L] "pimping bees" > > Hello Mike & All, > BEE-I is basically a hobby/sideline list and your thoughts do apply to those > direct marketing their product. However when on the scale of the four > beekeepers from my December ABJ article honey is simply a commodity sold > bulk in drums or totes raw on the open market to the highest bidder. That is a choice that the large scale operators are making; you can choose what business you want to be in. If the line of business is a poor one, is it not better to move into a more lucrative market, possibly just for part of your business, than to stay where you are complaining about poor returns? > Not many large beekeepers pack their own honey. Again that is a choice that is being made. I wonder where the value is being added? I know that for my small scale operation I can double my net selling price by packing. What is more, the packing is a much easier operation than standing out in fields in most weathers working the bees, removing the honey, transporting it and then extracting it. In my book that is the donkey part of the operation. > > > What is the Unique Selling Point of the product? > > Please do not confuse selling small amounts of honey with the discussion of > comodity honey. What I was trying to do was to suggest that supplying a commodity may not be the best place to be. If you can open up whole new directions, as the Kiwis have done, then for a while you have a new market to yourself until the competition catches up. That can be very lucrative place to be, providing that you remember that the competition always catches up. > > Orange, Sourwood, Buckwheat or Tupelo honey can bring higher prices in the > specialty honey packer market . But when supplies are high you can get > docked because of the need for blending out those flavors in the regular > market. > Orange honey in Florida is at times docked if dark and strong in flavor and > the whole state has a bumper crop. Way more than is needed for the specialty > market. > > Richard Adee's plan to hold as much of his crop as long as he can waiting > for the price to increase is common and has been pacticed for as long as > commercial beekeeping has been around but there comes a time when you are > forced for various reasons to clear the warehouse. Honey is fairly easy to > store for a few years if moisture is correct. The CCC honey loan program was > started to give commercial beekeepers cash flow while being able to wait up > to nine months looking for a buyer. Before the loan program the packers > stood at the beekeepers door with cheap offers knowing the beekeeper would > have to sell a certain amount of drums to create fall cash flow. I suggest that this is a very clear explanation of why supplying a commodity can be a hard place to be. > > If you don't have one then > > why not buy your competitor's product if it's comparable and cheaper? > > I can not tell you the number of marketing presentations I have sat through > over the last four decades. One thing has always been the same: > > THE LOWEST PRICE HONEY ON THE SHELF SELLS THE MOST JARS. > If that is complete description of the honey marketplace, how come I am selling my honey to retailers for more than twice the retail price of the cheapest honey in my town? Part of the answer to that question is that the cheap competition is getting a bad press because of contamination issues, combined with a wish by at least some consumers to buy a product with a reduced carbon footprint. I cannot compete with the lowest priced honey, but I can operate so that I don't have to. > I found a different scenario in > health food stores so I concentrated on selling honey in health food stores > where my "local' label would help sell my product. I still do retail sales > in stores but not on the scale i did at one time. This is just my point. You improved your bottom line by supplying products that commanded a better place in the market. > > > > Perhaps we all have a > > Unique "X" factor, but X= manuka gives a honey that commands UK prices > > well > > over $US20 per pound retail. > > I can tell you that any honey priced at $20 a pound in most grocery stores > will not hold shelf space. Maybe in a health food store but sales will be > limited. > OK, but 30% of the sales at 4 times the price is still a winner. Mike Rowbottom HARROGATE North Yorkshire UK ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2007 10:18:23 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Aaron Morris Subject: FW: Update as of 21 Dec 07 - Organic Beekeepers Conference Feb 15-17 2008 Oracle,Az MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit From: deealusby1@aol.com [mailto:deealusby1@aol.com] Sent: Friday, December 21, 2007 12:12 AM Subject: Update as of 21 Dec 07 - Organic Beekeepers Conference Feb 15-17 2008 Oracle,Az Hi all: The conference meeting is now being updated below with PhD Kerstin Ebbersten from Sweden now speaking on "Bee Genetics and Breeding for Sustainable Beekeeping". Dr Ebbersten is with the Swedish Board of Agriculture, Department for Animal Production and Health, overseeing Bee Issues for the government of Sweden. Hence she will be a keynote type speaker. Her PhD thesis is also of same subject matter for sustainable beekeeping. Both she and her husband are deeply into organic beekeeping with her husband now retired the former Dean of of the faculty (agriculture, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences.). I look forward to meeting both of them at the meeting so I can learn much. So update for meeting now reads as follows: As the Organic Beekeepers Yahoo.com discussion group has now grown in numbers to over 1,650+ members, we have put together our first meeting for an American Beekeepers Association, for beekeepers into organic beekeeping, to come together to associate for clean sustainable beekeeping with "NO" treatments. Meeting to be held in Oracle, Arizona at the YMCA Triangle Y Ranch Camp and Retreat Center 15-17 February 2008. Arrival checkin time is 12:00PM, noon, 15 Feb, with departure checkout time 2:00PM 17 Feb. Fee for meeting, to be paid in advance (by 1 February 2008 requested by YMCA), is $80.00 per individual pre-pay, that covers 3 days of talks with speakers, two nights "lodging in cabins" (dormitory style 6 bunks, 2 singles per cabin, in 4-5 cabin groupings, with each grouping a shared bath facility, with bring own linen/blankets/sleepingbag), including 6 meals. Men to be lodged seperate from women, with limited family type lodging available for those bringing children and/or husbands/wives not wishing to be seperated, but willing to share cabins. Vendors welcomed, with "No" additional charge for vendors other then normal lodging costs for meeting/catered meals. The meeting will start Friday afternoon 2pm with hands on demo/workshop on "Housel Positioning", with 8pm Friday Night Hello's/Dinner; run all day Saturday, and thru Sunday afternoon checkout time of 2pm. Friday night Hello/s will also have speakers, along with Saturday night dinner. Three conference meeting areas will be used with those attending rotating around throughout the three day affair. Hawkins Hall (60-80+ seating), Sportsman's Hall (100-150 seating), and Green Retreat conference rooms A/B (80-100 seating). Speakers now confirming are: Michael Bush (overseeing the Sportsman's Hall) for talks on Bee Breeding, along with PhD Kerstin Ebbersten from Sweden, speaking on "Bee Genetics and Breeding for Sustainable Beekeeping", Dee Lusby from Arizona, and Randy Quinn from Florida, (worked with Dadants starline/midnight breeding program), with 1 as yet still unconfirmed speaker. Scott McPherson (overseeing the Hawkins Hall) for talks on various Top Bar Hives and their management, with Corwin Bell (Colorado speaker/teacher) bringing TBH for demo, etc. Dean "Deknow" (overseeing the Green Retreat Conference rooms A/B) for talks on Organic Beekeeping as to what it means, how we fit into the larger world of beekeeping, and where we go from here with future planning, Along with Dee Lusby helping at times, and 1 as yet still unconfirmed speaker. During Friday's afternoon signing in starting 12:00pm noon, in addition from 2:00PM till 2 hour before nights dinner, a basic workshop of interest on "Housel Positioning",will be available; along with another workshop Sunday morning until Lunch (checkout time 2:00PM). For more information see: http://www.tucsonymca.org or visit Organic Beekeepers at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/organicbeekeepers/. For pre-payment of registration per person of $80, due in advance of attending by NLT 1 Feb 08 per request YMCA (plan/food buying), send to: Organic Beekeepers % Dee Lusby, HC 65, Box 7450, Amado, Arizona 85645, with stamped self address envelop (2-stamps) for returning receipt and more information on YMCA to sender. Phone for more information (Dee Lusby) is 1-520-398-2474 eve concerning reservations. In addition, please call Cindy Lindow for help with discount Airline Tickets with Confirmation number A0628AA.The code will give you 5% off your ticket price. Phone Number is: 810-329-6641. For general information concerning the meeting other contacts are Joe Waggle (Penn) 724-694-5756, Scott McPherson (Ind) 563-324-0848, Keith Malone (Alaska) 907-688-0588, John Moerschbacher (Canada) 403-288-2829 ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2007 09:20:35 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "Peter L. Borst" Subject: Sustainability MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=WINDOWS-1252 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit So what is Sustainable Beekeeping? As many of you know, like many agricultural trades American beekeeping is struggling. Bee diseases and the devastating effects of honeybee parasites, overuse and misuse of miticides and resulting chemical resistance, as well as a glut of cheap Chinese and Argentinean honey flooding the US market have all had their effect on American apiculture. To survive, we decided to take an old school approach to raising honeybees, not learning as much from 'current research' rather lessons learned about nature and sustainable agricultural and organic practices. We have never used 'hard' chemicals such as Fluvalinate and Coumaphos to control mites and have instead implemented a diverse integrated pest management strategy. The long-term survivability of apiculture depends on our ability to manage pests through better management practices and breeding genetic traits into our honeybees. In practice, we have begun to raise our own northern bred 'survivor' queens. This approach is nothing scientific, just solid genetic selection based on honey production and winter survivability – pure and simple. Conversely, we eliminate the weakest colonies by splitting them up or combining them with stronger colonies. Last year we began a practice of making summer nucleus colonies. We take the least productive colonies in mid-late July and split them into five 4-frame colonies introducing a queen that we have raised from our most productive and healthy colony. We then let them grow large enough to winter-over as a very small colony. In the spring, instead of purchasing packaged bees or making splits from the best colonies, we raise new colonies from these small nucs. In essence, we have moved to a completely self-sustaining system that focuses on three parts, honey production from our large over-winter colonies, queen rearing from our northern bred survivor stock, and nucleus colony production to replace winter loss and to increase the number of producing colonies in the spring. Kurt Merrill Merrill's Honeybees North Charlestown, NH ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2007 10:51:05 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Bill Truesdell Subject: Re: Sustainability In-Reply-To: <476A8F30.7030605@suscom-maine.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Anyone else notice that the model for sustainability is what existed with family farms in the past and they were not sustainable? The market decided that. So the move toward sustainable farms is toward unsustainable farms. Same with beekeeping. The desire of some is a move from cheap and sustainable to expensive and unsustainable. Doubt that? There are many substitutes for honey and the market will quickly choose between honey and a cheap alternative. There is a big difference between a farmer's market and the local superstore. There is a big difference between 55gal cans to supply the market and a 3lb bottle to supply a niche. Bill Truesdell Bath, Maine ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2007 10:54:41 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "Peter L. Borst" Subject: Re: Sustainability MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Bill writes: > If we went by today's definition of sustainability, we would all be beelining and getting honey from trees ... today's definition is only an invention to cover the organic movement. Sounds good but does not stand up well to inquiry. Not so. Sustainability has had mainstream support for quite a while. The question is not "Do we need it?" but "How do we go about it?" quoted material: Humanity faces an unprecedented challenge as our numbers grow, while Earth and its capacity to support us do not. People across the United States and around the world aspire to better lives for themselves and for their children: food, shelter, a safe and healthy environment, education, jobs, and other material needs and conveniences. Industries strive to produce more goods, farmers to grow more crops; and human demands on forests, fields, rivers, and oceans increase. Our challenge is to create a future in which prosperity and opportunity increase while life flourishes and pressures on oceans, earth, and atmosphere -- the biosphere -- diminish; to create a life-sustaining Earth that supports a dignified, peaceful, and equitable existence. It is a powerful vision, and even as we see evidence that damage to natural systems is accelerating, we also see individuals, companies, and communities finding solutions that work: new products, new technologies, changed minds and changed approaches that provide improved service, better information, and wider choice with drastically reduced impact on the environment. From "Advancing Prosperity, Opportunity, and a Healthy Environment for the 21st Century" 1999. The President's Council on Sustainable Development ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2007 11:22:26 -0500 Reply-To: lloyd@rossrounds.com Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Lloyd Spear Subject: "Pimping Bees" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Discussions about how to differentiate one's honey in order to enjoy higher prices, and the sad state of affairs when unable to do so, always remind me of an article in Harvard Business Review( 'HBR') about 20 years ago. The authors of the HBR article made a study of commodity pricing over the past 200 years and covered commodities such as copper, gold, tea, coffee, sugar, wheat, oil, etc. Their thesis was that various price-controlling schemes (think OPEC) often worked well in the short term but invariably failed in the long term. Further, they maintained, the long term prices of all commodities were determined by the lowest cost producer, who invariably set prices at just above cost. Any technological advantages held by higher cost producers were of nil benefit to UNLESS IT RESULTED IN THEM BEING THE LOWER COST PRODUCER. An example demonstrating the effect of this thesis is what has happened to diamond prices, where for years a cartel set prices artificially high, and the cartel fell apart when ample supplies of diamonds were discovered in Russia and Australia. Presumably, the authors would argue that in the long term OPEC's efforts to maintain artificially high prices will fail. While there has been some signs of such pending failure, political considerations (not supply and demand for oil) have kept OPEC alive and well. For honey, I believe that operations such as Adee's are doomed to forever sell at the prices set by the lowest cost producer; currently China. However, some beekeepers, such as Mike Rowbottom, take steps to effective remove their products from the commodity labeled as 'honey' and sell it as another product...such as, 'Honey from HARROWGATE'. Obviously (to those of us in the US) 'Honey from North Dakota', just does not do the same job, so the Adee's and those of a similar ilk are in a tough position. Equally obvious, the National Honey Board's initiative to remove honey from a commodity status by labeling it by floral source was of little interest to the Adee's of the world and was thus doomed to failure. (Since the very existence of the NHB was dependent on votes based on the *pounds*, and not the value, of honey.) But there is no rule saying that high cost commodity producers cannot whine... Enjoy your holidays! Lloyd -- Lloyd Spear Owner Ross Rounds, Inc. Manufacture of equipment for round comb honey sections, Sundance Pollen Traps, and producer of Sundance custom labels. Contact your dealer or www.RossRounds.com ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2007 11:33:04 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: =?windows-1252?Q?Yoon_Sik_Kim?= Subject: On Sustainable Beekeeping Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Aaron, my apologies for not having been able to abridge my thoughts below better. Should you decide not to post it, I can understand and accept it. Personally, I take the term “sustainable,” as used by Brian here on this list, to mean “balanced” (or as close as possible to “natural setting”), “maintainable,” or “harmonious” (without endangering or wiping out the species, that is), an attempt to bring *a holistic approach* by looking at how beekeeping is an integral part of an interdependent, complex, larger ecosystem that has taken eons to arrive at, rather than a singular operation independent of other factors in our industrialized setting. I believe the diatribe between the two camps, whether pro or con, stems from man’s undying, almost religious, desire to control everything, particularly nature, for maximum efficiency and maximum profiteering. Sure, we gain some, lose some, and at times, we seem to find the middle ground, at least for a while. But at times we seem to go too far. Using the above definition, let us examine how far our industry has departed from the balanced and maintainable (I am not using the words “natural” or “organic” deliberately) way of keeping bees by stretching the term “sustainable” in migratory operation: 1. Pollination alone is not how our bees survive in nature. It is nectar-gathering, and supplemental pollen-gathering in the process, for which bees have been engineered through natural selection. Hence, industrial almond pollination exclusively serves us, the humans, totally ignoring their needs, an irresponsible stewardship. In other words, there is no give-and-take in this marriage, hence not symbiotic. What’s in it for THEM? 2. Worse, a massive dose of almond pollen alone, as many on this list have already observed, does not serve the bees well, granted almond pollen has any value, in and of itself. (Indeed one cannot live by bread alone but moonshine and shoe-shine women, eh-hem!) Almond honey is internationally famous for a cooking ingredient but not much else. Given the low grad almond nectar, it is as if someone is forcing us to live on fish for a month, but on nothing else. 3. Even under the most ideal circumstance, nature cannot afford such vast wasteland of monocrop: worse, such industrial-scale number of hives in one spot, breathing and breeding pathogens as a list member has pointed out earlier when a migratory person, loaded with mites, warms toward your yards because he too must make a living and the price is good. Even if all the million hives are in perfect health, individual bees carry different levels of susceptibility to pathogens, the varying degrees of genetic mutations and variations we all carry in us (sickle-cell anemia for African descendants and stomach cancer for Southeast Asians for loving carcinogenic pickled, salted, and grilled stuff). My point is not genetic variations will result in pathogen propagation; rather, how we all have different degrees of susceptibility due to our varying genetic makeup. Some will serve as a portal to a new pathogen quicker than others, providing a vector, a door-opener. Similarly, not all the bees are same, even if they may appear healthy. 4. Pressing on the above line of argument, it does not take rocket science to figure out how a pandemic epidemic often coincides with *overcrowding* of a single species; the condition in such setting is ripe for the pathogens to migrate not only horizontally (intra-species) but also vertically (inter-species), jumping from species to species. For instance, the rats gave us the Plague; monkeys, AIDS; birds, SARS; pigs (and probably cows), MRSA (Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus). Consider MRSA for instance; having jumped from a pig sty to humans, it then migrated to crowded hospitals, the germ bed for humans. Having escaped the crowded hospital, MRSA is now common in locker rooms (Community-Acquired-MRSA), another crowded living space occupied by healthy young athletes. On the origin of MRSA in Netherlands and how pig farmers started to experience this antibiotic-resistant strain, see the url below: http://public.cq.com/docs/hb/hbnews110-000002636736.html 5. Given such attested patterns of vertical migration of pathogens, bees will, through overcrowding, experience new pathogens heretofore unheard of, horizontally as well as vertically (like SHB); for example, nosema (a spore-forming, unicellular, parasitic fungi) has never been an issue in the south, and still isn’t in my operation, thanks to a warmer climate and screened bottom ventilation. However, it appears that even a common strain of nosema can wreak havoc in the north—just as a certain strain of common pneumonia or tuberculosis in humans has lately turned deadly and resistant: http://www.fda.gov/fdac/features/795_antibio.html (Excellent article explaining the mechanism as to how *bacteria* become resistant) It has already been documented that apis-pathogens do cross species- barrier (Cerena, Mellifera, and possibly Dorsata) and infect each other given the chance, always lurking to find a niche. If I were a virus, I too would love to break into bees piled up in one locale as smorgasbord, thus outsmarting human ingenuity as we often outfox ourselves. http://209.85.173.104/search? q=cache:I3w5UUSGKeQJ:blc.arizona.edu/courses/181lab/TAfiles/44/Bad% 2520proposal%2520good% 2520proposal.doc+apis+mellifera+and+cerena+disease&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=5&gl=us (Deformed Wing Virus jumping from Cerena to Mellifera; watch out for the wrpas) 6. To say the obvious, the reason for such rising number of unforeseen vectors appears to be the direct result of stressing bees in our industrial operation, activities that are remotely related to bee’s natural way of surviving: massive scale feeding, massive requeening, massive movement across the continent, massive-scale monocrops, massive exposure to chemical sprays that sustain the monocrops, massive disappearance of forage land to develop more monocrop land, massive importation of foreign bees from one country to another to meet that industrial demand and make up the massive loss—activities that forces us to treat the living and breathing organism as an unbreakable steel-bolt in the giant beekeeping factory. The typical argument for such monocroping has been reduced prices for our groceries. Probably so or may be not so. The illegal immigrants, too, argued that our grocery bills would shoot up once the agricultural industry loses their field labor, a reason they used for their amnesty. But actually the prices have remained more or less the same, if not lower than before; in fact, people report that we have produced more with fewer illegal workers in the field. Although my heart, too, would like to believe that the collapse of beekeeping will create a domino effect across the entire economy, my head tells me differently. Nothing drives people more irrationally than the media sensationalism, such as Y2K hullabaloo, or the never-ending Kingdom Come. 7. This massive industrial-scale beekeeping operation, mentioned above, illustrates keeping bees independently, above and beyond nature— never realizing that beekeeping is only a small part of that giant total ecosystem, about which we have been myopic and about which we do not seem to acknowledge that it took eons for nature to build its current supple equilibrium. 8. Successful migratory beekeeping, if continued, along with industrial monocroping, seems to offset that delicate equilibrium, that difficult balance overnight, irrevocably—the ultimate exercise of mastery and control of nature by a handful of humans wanting to maximize their profit. Under such scenarios, it is not entirely impossible to lose bees on the surface of the planet forever. Hobbyists and sideliners, too, will succumb to such wheeling and dealing demise, for “No good deed should go unpunished.” As far as I know, there is no other species of insects, other than the kind of ants that swell up its abdomen to collect “honey” for the period of dearth. Yes, it is hard to even think about the disappearance of bees off the planet, but they don’t seem to be thriving under current mode. One time, and still to some extent, the buzz word in beekeeping was Integrated Pest Management (IPM) preached by a few; in a nutshell, IPM tries to attack the bee-problems in a holistic way by closely monitoring the colonies throughout the year rather than treating, say, mites at one time, and then forgetting about it. Similarly, we should look at the bee operation in an integrated way, holistically, by looking at the whole picture that considers all the global issues Marla and others have already pointed out. The issue is not whether someone should make a living via almond-farming or migratory beekeeping; rather, it is whether such practice will impact and jeopardize the ecology in a few decades, a struggling and balanced system nature has taken for eons to create, irrevocably. This is a far far far larger issue than someone’s ability to put the bread and butter on the table. For instance, where will the chemical sprays from massive monocroping end up in the long run, just as where will all the rubber particles from the tires we wear out every year end up? We are breathing them in daily. They will end up in your and my blood stream, if they have already not done so. I am not blaming anyone else here, but go take a walk along a river. Look at the industrial garbage that chokes our rivers; I would never eat a catfish from it: it is full of sores and ulcers inside. I know I used to angle them along the Cimarron River. Without such macro-vision, finding the “cure” for Israeli virus alone will not cut, an ingenious duct tape to hold a hot engine part for a while. The fact that American bee suppliers cannot meet the domestic demand seems to indicate the industry is in deep doo doo; we used to import bees to other countries. Now that we found a virus from Australian imports, should we now try others like Chile, Argentina, Europe, and China. Why not? Such bar-hopping for foreign sources will help us *exhaust* the import sources. What then? This has been the pattern up till now. Indeed, for a hobbyist, a single colony death is a national tragedy, and it should be so, and it must remain so. However, for a migratory beekeeper, ten-thousand colony loss is a mere statistics, a figure against last year’s benchmark, for he will order twenty-thousand more next year. Why not? But from where? Try Mars? What’s wrong with him to expect *different results* next year while putting in the *same* input, year after year? Yoon In the 70’s F today, my bees are flying in the dead of winter! ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2007 11:38:08 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Brian Fredericksen Subject: Re: "pimping bees" Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On Thu, 20 Dec 2007 09:32:04 -0600, Bob Harrison wrote: >THE LOWEST PRICE HONEY ON THE SHELF SELLS THE MOST JARS. > > >Many buyers simply scan the shelf and grab the lowest price bottle in the >size they want. I spent a couple days once in a store watching and then >asking buyers why they made their purchase. I found a different scenario in >health food stores so I concentrated on selling honey in health food stores >where my "local' label would help sell my product. I still do retail sales >in stores but not on the scale i did at one time. > What I notice is many US beeks are stuck in the mindset that they have to sell in plastic and "look" like the big packers. BIG mistake. You can't compete with someone who has an automated packing line and is packing honey they bought as a commodity at the lowest price. Add a story or image about your operation on the label and sell a superior product in glass at a price you can make money at. its not that hard really. if anything i see the future looking bright for those who follow the simple guidelines i noted. people want the real McCoy and will pay extra for it. sure there are bottom feeders in every market shopping on price. let them go to Sam's Club they are not your customer. IMO there are so few beeks around that there is room for everyone on the shelf - the latest "fad" is buying local and all US beeks could be capitalizing on that. My point earlier about US migratory feedlot honey being lumped with imported is that a growing movement of people want an ethically produced product and shun imports. I 'm afraid that US produced commodity honey does not have much of an image to sell their product on when people are starting to hear more and more the facts about migratory beekeeping. Even if its not true that CCD is a migratory created problem the PERCEPTION is growing that it is a human caused problem which is driven by greed and BIg AG. What romance is there in buying a squeeze container of say Souix Bee if you believe it contains imported honey or is honey produced by US feedlot beeks who are portrayed as pushing their bees? What baffles me is why there is not a bigger push to get (COOL) Country of Origin Labeling implemented on honey. IMO this is one of the key policy issues that could be changed by our government that would benefit the current state of US beekeeping and should have been part of the recent Farm Bill. I do appreciate that many large bee operations must do pollination to survive. I think we can do better then SURVIVE but some practices need to change. We can argue all we want about what sustainable means etc. Who would offer though that migratory beekeeping IS sustainable? The situation appears to be getting worse every year and the after affects are spilling over into the non-migratory segment..... this is not rocket science folks. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2007 09:33:05 -0800 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: randy oliver Subject: Re: Sustainability MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="Windows-1252"; reply-type=original Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit The aspect of "sustainability" of migratory operations that is of question to me is the cost of transportation as energy becomes more dear. When honey spiked a few years back, I actually shipped drums of it from California to Pennsylvania! What a waste of fuel. Both honey and bees on combs are danged heavy. As the cost of fuel rises, the pool of cost-effective bees from which to draw for almond pollination will shrink westward. Florida beekeepers are really weighing the freight costs of hauling cross country this year. I can't imagine that there will ever bee enough "local" bees to pollinate the almonds. The market of cost and profit will eventually determine the sustainability of long-distance migration. Randy Oliver ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2007 13:01:49 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Bill Truesdell Subject: Re: Sustainability In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Peter L. Borst quoted: > Our challenge is to create a future in which prosperity and > opportunity increase while life flourishes and pressures on oceans, > earth, and atmosphere -- the biosphere -- diminish; to create a > life-sustaining Earth that supports a dignified, peaceful, and > equitable existence. I still say it is a moving target and a nice buzz word, used by different groups for their own agenda. The statement is nice (could have added "Truth, Justice and the American way"), but how does it say that small farms are the way to go? Or not to use GMO crops, or nuclear energy, or pesticides, or mono culture? But all of those agendas have been put into the definition of sustainability by different groups. These discussions always assume that the other camp is against whatever you are for. So there must be a "Mothers for Drunk Driving". I would like to go on record that I am in favor of apple pie, sustainability, sobriety and mothers. Bill Truesdell Bath, Maine ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2007 16:36:33 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "Peter L. Borst" Subject: Re: Sustainability MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline I think it useful to give examples of what people are doing to Bee Sustainable. Here a fellow from Pennsylvania got a SARE Grant to do just that. ("Since 1988, the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education program has helped advance farming systems that are profitable, environmentally sound and good for communities through a nationwide research and education grants program. The program, part of USDA's Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service, funds projects and conducts outreach designed to improve agricultural systems") excerpts: SARE Grant Project Number: FNE06-567 Type: Farmer/Rancher Project Region: Northeast Report Year: 2007 Craig Cella 867 E. Winter Rd. Loganton, PA 17747 Phone: 570-725-3682 How to make beekeeping more sustainable Goals To develop a management program that would increase hive production during early summer and also to reduce virus levels during the late summer nectar dearth. Part 1 was to divide colonies into two equal nucs and introduce a new queen into both the test group and the control hives managed in the traditional way. Part 2 was designed to see if feeding sugar syrup in mid summer during the nectar dearth would have any influence on the amount of virus indications that could be seen on brood combs such as empty cells, holes in cappings or dead pupae. Farm Profile We have a 125 acre hay and grass production farm along with over 100 honey bee colonies that are used primarily for research. We also supply game birds to people Economics It wasn't an earth shattering study but I think it opened up some possibilities to make beekeeping more profitable. For the price of a plywood cover ($4.00) and a bottom ($4.00) you could double your hive numbers by just buying one new queen, although you should replace the old queen also. Queens will usually sell for around $15.00 at this time of the year so to replace the old queen plus add a new queen to the 2 divides you would have about $30.00 involved. Queens should be replaced at least once a year for a number of reasons but it all boils down to better production. Just like animals, a two year old chicken doesn't lay like a year old one and an 8 year old cow doesn't milk like a 4 year old. I think in a normal year you would double your production and you have the opportunity to select the top half of the queens when you reunite in mid July. Culling is one thing we must do more of. It would be very difficult to place a dollar sign on the impact of late summer feeding. First it will depend on your local area and nectar sources and then you have to factor in the late summer flows and your bee condition. Then you are left with winter losses - do those that are fed overwinter better? I don't know but I know fat fall cows drop more healthy calves in the spring than ones in poor condition going into winter. For full report go to: http://tinyurl.com/3da7xs http://www.sare.org/reporting/report_viewer.asp?pn=FNE06-567&ry=2007&rf=1 http://www.sare.org/ ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2007 19:01:12 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Bob Darrell Subject: Re: Sustainability In-Reply-To: <476BE0E9.3010001@suscom-maine.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v752.2) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On 21-Dec-07, at 10:51 AM, Bill Truesdell wrote: > There is a big difference between 55gal cans to supply the market > and a 3lb bottle to supply a niche. Hi Bill and all Living in Canada I cannot speak of what happens in the US, but I suspect its the same as here. The 55 gal cans you speak of are sold to packers who blend it with foreign honey(10/1 ratio, local = 1 foreign = 10). The honey in the 3 lb jar is eaten as is. Bob Darrell Caledon Ontario Canada 44N80W PS: Seasons Greetings to our Bee-L family worldwide ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2007 19:14:05 -0600 Reply-To: Tim Tucker Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Tim Tucker Subject: National Beekeeping Conference Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Aaron wrote I'd be glad to meet up with you Aaron and all on Wednesday after the Shared Interest Group Meetings which should end around 5:00-5:30 p.m. For the Hobbyist/Sideliner meeting I have scheduled to speak; Barry Thompson (Thompson Apiaries and Barry works with the Beltsville Bee Lab on certain topics )on "Resiliancy" -Cannot sideline/hobbyist beekeepers provide backup when disasters adversly affect commercial beekeepers? Dr. John Skinner -University of Tennessee - "Removing bees from structures" Gary Reuter - Scientist from the University of MN. - "Breeding and Raising Queens on a Small Scale" Ginger Reuter - Gary's wife will be speaking on Beeswax- Care and Considerations for Producing Quality Products. Dr. Diana Sammataro - Tuscon Bee Lab - Nectar production and Honey Plants of the US. Hope everyone can make it and stay afterward for a short get acquainted mini-meeting. I know Randy O. is coming. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. This is shaping up to be the largest event for the beekeeping industry in many years. Plan on making it if there's any way you can take a day or two out of your schedule. Tim Tucker ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2007 20:24:49 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Lanfeust Subject: Sustainability In-Reply-To: <476BE0E9.3010001@suscom-maine.net> Content-Disposition: inline Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit > The unfortunate truth about nature, is that it is not sustainable and > never has been. Plants and animals became extinct long before mankind > was present. [...] > If we went by today's definition of sustainability, we would all be > beelining and getting honey from trees- until someone wrote a book > declaring that technique was not sustainable. Back to the definition of sustainability the classic definition extracted from the 1987 Brundtland'report (and reproduced in any basics on Environment) is : " development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. " In fact the report was quite more consistent and the definition also contained a serie of conditions to sustainable development (but one has to turn the report's next page, which seems very tiring): - at the strict minimum, natural systems must not be endangered by development - sustainabe development requires to establish the maximum rate ressources form ecosystems can be exploited by human development (in order to respect to concept has defined previously). But one tend to forget those conditions to manipulate words in discours. That definition, linked to human activity, IMHO can not lead us to conclude that "nature [...] is not sustainable and never has been". The concept is just not relevent for nature. That said, the concept is so large that it can be and has been being so largely distorted and manipulated to any agenda you wish, in the very same way that good, bad and other moral concepts have been. Most of the time, you know when make good actions and when you make bad actions. But if you want to define the exact limit, you can spent thousands of years in debates, you can distorse the words to push people in wars, slavering or in negating others souls. By the way, the assertion infered a syllogism: species became extinct long before mankind was present so species extinction due to mankind activites is included in the natural process of species extinction rythm... Neverteless, I appreciate most of posts from the author of that syllogism. There is nothing personnal in my intervention. > If farms in general were comparably dispersed and diversified, the need for migratory > pollinators would practically disappear. I think that model is clear; how > to get there, both individually and collectively, is the challenge. Back to sustainable beekeeping As defined academically, it would be the subtil balance between social, environmental and economic dimensions of beekeeping. Easy said...I agree. What is it in practice, I don't know exactly (if so, I would have already done it !). But it doesn't mean (and never meant) you have to go back to small familly beekeeping and gather honey in trees... naked in your banana skirt. When you use remanent chemical that bring up pests resistance you know you are out of the way. When you treat systematically and massively bees because your management weaken your bees, you know you are out of the way. When you move infested ill bees all over the country, you know you are out of the way. When you are bank rupted with all your familly because you wanted to keep bees as in the 1700's, you know you are no way. In that field again, I guess we have to let apart extreme religious ideologies, were they environmentaly pure green or economicaly pure blue or socialy pure red, we have to let apart also easy cynisme and confortable stoicism in order do our best to keep bees (and live from beekeeping for some) in way we are proud of. Hervé On Fri, 21 Dec 2007 10:51:05 -0500, "Bill Truesdell" said: > Anyone else notice that the model for sustainability is what existed > with family farms in the past and they were not sustainable? The market > decided that. So the move toward sustainable farms is toward > unsustainable farms. > > Same with beekeeping. The desire of some is a move from cheap and > sustainable to expensive and unsustainable. Doubt that? There are many > substitutes for honey and the market will quickly choose between honey > and a cheap alternative. There is a big difference between a farmer's > market and the local superstore. There is a big difference between 55gal > cans to supply the market and a 3lb bottle to supply a niche. > > Bill Truesdell > Bath, Maine > > ****************************************************** > * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * > * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * > ****************************************************** -- Hervé www.emelys.com -- http://www.fastmail.fm - I mean, what is it about a decent email service? ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2007 19:57:47 -0600 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Bob Harrison Subject: Re: On Sustainable Beekeeping In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="Windows-1252"; reply-type=original Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Hello All, Hardly know where to start with this post but will try to educate the author. > Personally, I take the term “sustainable,” as used by Brian here on this > list, to mean You guys have certainly got the right to your opinions but looking at the dictionary meaning I see none of the terms you use. You say large scale beekeeping is going to crash and take the whole of beekeeping with it. I guess we will have to agree to disagree. History does not support your hypothesis and all you offer is opinion (which you have a right to!). I started as a migratory beekeeper going on 49 years ago. I have had a couple problem years but my bees look great! My fellow commercial beekeepers bees look great Are we the exceptions to the rule? No CCD here! > 1. Pollination alone is not how our bees survive in nature. It is > nectar-gathering, and supplemental pollen-gathering in the process, for > which bees have been engineered through natural selection. There is a whole world of beekeeping the stationary beekeeper has never seen. Honeybees without a flow are like a duck out of water. Migratory beekeepers seek out honey flows for the bees.Stationary beekeepers for the most part feed patties and syrup. Stationary beekeepers in Georgia are praying for rain while the Georgia migratory beeks are all moved to areas with rain. Hence, > industrial almond pollination exclusively serves us, the humans, totally > ignoring their needs, an irresponsible stewardship. How do you figure? bees come out of almonds strong and needing split. Bees love the almond bloom! In other words, there > is no give-and-take in this marriage, hence not symbiotic. What’s in it > for THEM? bees love a flow! Spending half a year in a cluster is not what bees need! Before almond pollination increased to a profitable level the main reason we went to almonds was for the buildup. > 2. Worse, a massive dose of almond pollen alone, as many on this list > have already observed, does not serve the bees well, What the heck are you talking about/ Nothing wrong with almond pollen! Almonds are the only serious flow in the U.S. at the time. I think every California beekeeper would ask to move his hives into almonds to build rather than leave in an area of no flow. We always ask for the dinks to be placed in almonds free of charge so they can build. Some of those dinks look better than hives we were paid for once they return which says what for the graders? > 4. Pressing on the above line of argument, it does not take rocket > science to figure out how a pandemic epidemic often coincides with > *overcrowding* of a single species; The above has not been our experience with bees in almonds. Or orange flow as an example. Our opinion is weakened immune systems cause problems and not over crowding. In orange we have kept 600=700 hives in one spot without the above problems for over forty years. Yes the whole truckload on an acre. > 5. for example, > nosema (a spore-forming, unicellular, parasitic fungi) > has never been an > issue in the south, and still isn’t in my operation, thanks to a warmer > climate and screened bottom ventilation. Very misinformed. Nosema is usually unseen by the uninformed beekeeper. Kills bees in the last two weeks of life (when a forager) The largest buyer of fumidil in the U.S. was a commercial beekeeper in Florida ( source Mid-Con). Now would he be spending tens of thousands of dollars if he did not need the product. The beekeeper had a lab and tested for nosema. "still isn't in my operation" Want to bet money? If you have NEVER treated I will find some spores. I don't mean to sound condescending but I am here to inform you that you need to get serious about nosema and do some testing. same for the no treatments group getting ready to meet! > Yes, it is hard to even think about the > disappearance of bees off the planet, but they don’t seem to be thriving > under current mode. I heard this chant first almost fifty years ago! > just as where will all the rubber > particles from the tires we wear out > every year end up? We are breathing > them in daily. They will end up in your and my blood stream, if they have > already not done so. How would you solve the problem? Go back to horse and buggy (LESS RUBBER TIRES) ? Have you ever heard of a case of rubber from tires getting into the blood stream? Is the tire issue a crisis? Maybe we should all wear a mask when we go outside? Relax Yoon only having a bit of fun at your expense. Now I will not only cover my nose when I sneeze but when around cars on streets. ., finding the “cure” for Israeli virus alone will > not cut, an ingenious duct tape to hold a hot engine part for a while. You need to read Jim Fishers BC articles. no proof IAPV even harms bees. No proof the virus came in with imported bees. proof has been found now the virus was in the U.S. as early as 1999( source hackenberg). > The fact that American bee suppliers cannot meet the domestic demand seems > to indicate the industry is in deep doo doo; No it doesn't! It means that most young people see more profitable and less hard ways of making a living. new people are not coming into beekeeping. Most people can not afford the risk of large scale beekeeping. The outfit I worked with took around $200,000 a month just to turn the lights on and make a months payroll. That's not taking into consideration the cost of 10-15 trucks and forklifts plus 50,000 hives and support equipment. The person with millions of dollars to invest is not interested to invest in beekeeping. Which is why most large operations are parted out over a period of years when the owner retires. we used to import bees to > other countries. Now that we found a virus from Australian imports, Which strain are we talking? Three so far and all might have been in the U.S. before the import. The Science article researchers have got egg on their face! Improvable hypothesis is not fact. 16 times the science article pointed to Australia as the source of the IAPV virus and most important those researchers had ZERO proof the virus was even a problem! They completely ignored the fact that N. ceranae & KBV was found in 100% of the CCD samples. They called IAPV a *marker* but the better marker would have been N. ceranae or KBV ( both which are proven killers of bees!) In fact Dennis Anderson said in Australia he suspected IAPV was simply a mutant form of KBV (which has been in the U.S. for years). I would love to have a debate with the researchers from the Science article in front of the beekeeping community. Sadly my offers have been turned down. Why? Its one thing to get up and do a prepared text and then leave quickly without taking questions and to debate the issue with a knowledgeable beekeeper. > Indeed, for a hobbyist, a single colony death is a national tragedy, and > it should be so, and it must remain so. Maybe we should lower the flags to half mast once a year in memory! However, for a migratory > beekeeper, ten-thousand colony loss is a mere statistics, a figure against > last year’s benchmark, for he will order twenty-thousand more next year. At least we do agree on something! > Why not? But from where? Try Mars? Martian bees! A novel approach! An import from mars! Nanu Nanu! Mork from Ork! I guess its hard for you to fathom but for countless decades hives have been depopulated and replaced with packages from the south by beekeepers in the north. Not a popular idea with hive huggers but has been going on quietly for many decades. I do depopulate *dinks* but not without a moment of silence! being part Indian I always ask Mother Earth for forgiveness for my deed before doing the deed. Sometimes I make the sign of the cross also! bob -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2007 21:23:05 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: =?windows-1252?Q?Eric_Brown?= Subject: Re: Sustainability Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit >Anyone else notice that the model for sustainability is what existed >with family farms in the past and they were not sustainable? The market >decided that. The whole reason anyone is talking about sustainability is because what "the market decided" is so obviously destructive of the communities and ecosystems that sustain our quality of life. The basic concept is hard to argue with: there exist opportunities to make relatively small short- term gains at the expense of long-term productivity. The modern pattern is to blindly decide to have faith in the capitalist doctrine that indulging in short-sighted greed, gluttony, and vanity will somehow ultimately promote the general welfare. Alternatively, we can recognize opportunites to exercise restraint and then act responsibly. This ties in with the recent discussion on commodity honey. To call anything a commodity is to blind ourselves to the particulars of how that thing was produced. As such I believe the concept of a commodity is directly at odds with the concept of sustainability. No matter how narrowly we define our commodities (including organic designation), the concept of a commodity requires equating all products with a given least common denominator. Not wanting to look at honey as a commodity is not to say that Brian's honey is empirically any better than Bob's. I haven't heard anything substantive to suggest that. But I don't see any hope for a thorough exercise of responsibility on the part of the consumer apart from a real personal connection to the producer. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2007 21:23:11 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: =?windows-1252?Q?Eric_Brown?= Subject: Re: "pimping bees" Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit >Add a story or image about your operation on the label and sell a superior product in glass at a >price you can make money at. its not that hard really. .... >people want the real McCoy and will pay extra for it. .... >My point earlier about US migratory feedlot honey being lumped with imported is that a growing >movement of people want an ethically produced product and shun imports. The problem I have with your argument is that you're giving way too much credit to consumers, especially the kind of consumers you're talking about selling to. Is it possible to add a story or an image and sell for a premium price? Sure, I believe that. What I don't believe is that that story or image has to have any real substance, which is to say the market you're talking about is almost equally accessible to the kind of beekeepers you deride, should they decide to pursue it. Tell us, Brian, what your customers wouldn't let you get away with if you crafted your marketing carefully? You could treat your bees with coumaphos and brag that you didn't use amitraz or treat them with amitraz and brag that you didn't treat them with coumaphos. You could send your bees to almond pollination and just not mention it in your marketing. You could feed tanker loads of corn syrup and brag that your honey is raw and unfiltered. The beekeepers I know that sell their honey to "health food stores" for very high prices here in North Carolina do all of the above. >We can argue all we want about what >sustainable means etc. Who would offer though that migratory beekeeping IS sustainable? Are you saying your production/marketing model is sustainable? ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2007 21:23:18 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: =?windows-1252?Q?Eric_Brown?= Subject: Re: Sustainability Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit >I still say it is a moving target and a nice buzz word, used by >different groups for their own agenda. I suspect what you mean by "moving target" is that "sustainability" can't be reduced to a set of legalistic rules. As such I would agree that when used as a marketing buzz word that it serves little more than exploitation. As a framework for seeing our way (as producer-managers) through to responsible business models, however, the concept of sustainability is invaluable. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2007 18:32:56 -0800 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: a e Subject: Xmas MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Hi Aaron, I would like to wish you & all readers a Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year. Sincerely, Abbas ____________________________________________________________________________________ Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. http://mobile.yahoo.com/;_ylt=Ahu06i62sR8HDtDypao8Wcj9tAcJ ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ******************************************************