Subject: More PR on "drop in honey

From: [email-masked] (Andy Nachbaur)
Date: Mon, 26 Aug 1996 23:16:00 GMT

In the SF CHRONICLE "newspaper" Sunday, August 18, 1996 page B-5.

SHARP DROP IN HONEYBEES CREATING POLLINATION CRISIS
(AP)TUCSON

Now the experts are from the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, a prestigious
zoo where I have spent as much time as I could checking out the Desert
Tortoises which are my favorite's and of which I had a permit to keep a
couple of young ones when I lived in Arizona. It's a wonderful place
that should be on everyone's "must" visit list, but not my idea of a
creditable site for beekeeping information, but I guess the wire
services are not that particular and anyone who can write a "puff"
piece can get it published via the AP wire service, especially if they
have a well known address such as the "Desert Museum".

This so called "sharp drop in honeybees" story cites the fact that here
in California we need bees each spring to pollinate some 400,000 acres
of almonds, and we don't have enough bees and have to import them for
other states. This is a fact, but it has nothing to do with any decline
in bee populations and a whole lot to do with the fact California has
never had a million hives of bee's and if we did we could not pasture
them after the almonds so California has for the last 25 years or more
been a good place to winter bee hives from out of state and earn a
little extra income or improve on a beekeepers cash flow with
pollination rentals. The supply truly is not infinite, but to this date
as far as I can find out NO almond grower who wanted bees has gone
without. Yes there are every year supply adjustments from beekeeper to
beekeeper and grower to grower, and each year we all wonder, and
sometimes hope for a real shortage so we can charge more but it has to
date always balanced out by the time the bloom is on and NO dramatic
shortage of bee's in the spring has happened. Will the winter of 96
bring the silent spring of 1997, the year of bee shortages? I doubt it,
unless the national honey crop turns out better then it now looks and
the average cash price of honey goes above $1.00 per pound and the
beekeepers decide they no longer need the "cash flow" from the almond
bloom and stay home.

This alarmist wire report goes on to to credit honeybees for "1/3 of
the food plants people eat" as dependent on honeybee pollination, and
cites "cashews". Now I know I am just a OLd Drone but what the insect
pollination of "cashew fruit" in SA have to do with the supply of bees
in NA goes way over my head when my own two feet are on the ground. I
do know a lot about the cashew nut, and how if you think a 12 once bag
of those new "phoney fat" potato chips will give you Montazuma's
revenge, just try eating a pound of salted whole cashews and tell me
it's not the same effect on your GI track. If you ever wondered why
all the snak food, and nuts can seldom be found in containers over a
pound or so it has to have something to do with protecting the
consuming public from finding the LD-50. (lethal dose that will kill 50%
of the world population)

In any case I am thinking that we are getting close to the LD-50 on news
reports on the "death" of the honeybee, and wonder how long until all
this becomes "self for filling" on the beekeeping industry. Heck these
guy's even go so far as to state the numbers of commercial bee hives in
the US has been reduced by half in the last 50 years because of pests,
predators, disease, "fear" of killer bees and bad weather. Well it is
true some 50 years ago the great war ended, the one Bob Dole, my Dad and
Granddad fought in, God Bless them all, and beekeepers did increase the
number of hives taking advantage of relative high prices, returning
beekeepers from the war, and available pasture. All this has changed,
but the price today is now about equal to the 1940's in some buying
power, but does not come close to parity which continues to out reach us
as new taxes and costs are piled on to the small beekeeper businessman
none who can be compared to any of the fortunate 500 in America, yet to
this day.
                             ttul OLd Drone

(c) Permission is granted to freely copy this document
in any form, or to print for any use.

(w) Opinions are not necessarily facts. Use at own risk.
(k) I am a papist, but just in case it makes a difference.
---
 þ QMPro 1.53 þ "Where there are fruits & nuts, there are beekeepers"