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Forest Beekeeper, I don't understand your trouble with linking all the chemicals they use/used on bees and fields/orchards and maximizing honey production. Dead, sick or hungry bees don't make industrial quantities of honey. That's the industrial economy paradigm - destroy natural order of things and patch up "fragments" with chemistry, poisons, ersatzes and the rest of the "progress" to maximize production outside of the natural limits. Industrial scale honey production is highly unnatural enterprise; all that crowding, diet deficiencies, stress, etc. is "mitigated" using science & chemicals. Recent bee die off just showed how imperfect the most advanced patching up is. Sure, smaller scale (and hobby) honey producers are not culpable to the same extent as industrial honey operators. However, germs, pesticides, illness, etc. know no borders, as a result even hobby bee keepers may turn to agrochemicals etc.. Sure, USDA (this pillar of corporate bottom-lines) keeps my long term well being close to its "I can't wait to join corporate boardroom" heart.
We can pretend that honey is a chemical free pristine product (harvested from the fields/orchards saturated with agrochemicals) because of some warm and fuzzy associations of a bee with farm paradise lost. I don't risk buying honey at supermarkets, it just doesn't appeal to me at all. Besides, most supermarkets charge about the same amount of $ for the equal volumes of corn syrup and honey. How that can be? I don't know what you charge for your honey and what you gross, but I somewhat doubt that you don't check grocery store prices to decide on your asking price. That's what local honey producers do in my area, despite similar prices local honey business is not brisk mildly speaking.
... That's the industrial economy paradigm - destroy natural order of things and patch up "fragments" with chemistry, poisons, ersatzes and the rest of the "progress" to maximize production outside of the natural limits. Industrial scale honey production is highly unnatural enterprise; all that crowding, diet deficiencies, stress, etc. is "mitigated" using science & chemicals. Recent bee die off just showed how imperfect the most advanced patching up is. Sure, smaller scale (and hobby) honey producers are not culpable to the same extent as industrial honey operators. However, germs, pesticides, illness, etc. know no borders, as a result even hobby bee keepers may turn to agrochemicals etc.. Sure, USDA (this pillar of corporate bottom-lines) keeps my long term well being close to its "I can't wait to join corporate boardroom" heart.
Where do you come up with this?
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... We can pretend that honey is a chemical free pristine product (harvested from the fields/orchards saturated with agrochemicals) because of some warm and fuzzy associations of a bee with farm paradise lost. I don't risk buying honey at supermarkets, it just doesn't appeal to me at all.
Good for you.
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... Besides, most supermarkets charge about the same amount of $ for the equal volumes of corn syrup and honey. How that can be? I don't know what you charge for your honey and what you gross, but I somewhat doubt that you don't check grocery store prices to decide on your asking price. That's what local honey producers do in my area, despite similar prices local honey business is not brisk mildly speaking.
Okay lets follow this delusional dream.
If a pound of corn syrup costs the same as a pound of honey, and I fed 10 pounds of corn syrup to a hive. It would likely give me 5 pounds of corn tasting honey in return.
Marketing that 5 pounds of honey at the same cost as 5 pounds of corn syrup, would means that I just lost 50% of my investment.
And none of this has any connection to any lie that the previous list of chemicals would increase production. They do not.
Feeding drugs to a hive is only done when the hive is sick. Once given to a hive the honey can not be sold. And the honey would become more expensive, to absorb the expense of the drug.
Drug-free honey is cheaper to produce, and is legal.
Drugged honey is more expensive to produce and is illegal.
There is no evidence, no documentation, no studies, nothing I have ever seen or heard of to suggest that any drug can increase honey production.
Honey comes from flower nectar. Nectar must be collected by bees. To increase nectar collection means you need nectar flow and more bees. There is no drug that will make flowers produce more nectar or more fructose in their nectar. Bees can only fly so fast, and you are not going to speed bees up.
I be producers out of China, India, Mexico could care less about the laws of the USA and drug thier bees when needed while going after western currency.
I be producers out of China, India, Mexico could care less about the laws of the USA and drug thier bees when needed while going after western currency.
I bet producers out of United States do the same. Not all of them, don't get me wrong.
My experience is that greed and profit are not the only motivators. A lot of the time it is lack of education - some farmers, bee keepers etc. are just throwing things at their land, veggies, fruits, grapes or hives not knowing laws or not knowing things have changed or simply not knowing how much of what to apply. Some folks try to prevent disease by applying fungicides and antibiotics and chemicals. People have this idealized image of the farmer who knows everything there is to know about everything farm related. You would be surprised how many of these folks are as ignorant and set in their ways as they come...
Finally, I am very doubtful that every ounce of honey (or other produce) produced in this country gets inspected (as evidenced by what is being sold at the grocery stores)
I buy my honey from Costco. I live on the island of Oahu and at our Costco store we have a brand of organic honey made from the nectar of Ohia and Lehua trees growing on Hawaii Island. I've been to the actual bee farm and seen how they process their honey and know the business is certified by the Hawaii Organic Farmers Association. I know this honey is good quality stuff. I won't post the web site because I don't want to give free advertising but you can probably find the site if you use the search terms "Big Island" and "organic honey."
If a pound of corn syrup costs the same as a pound of honey, and I fed 10 pounds of corn syrup to a hive. It would likely give me 5 pounds of corn tasting honey in return.
Marketing that 5 pounds of honey at the same cost as 5 pounds of corn syrup, would means that I just lost 50% of my investment.
16 OZ of the cheapest scariest corn syrup at Wall-Mart cost roughly $1.70. 16 OZ of the cheapest scariest honey at Wall-Mart cost roughly $3.50. Feeding 32 OZ of Wall-Mar Syrup would likely give you 16 OZ of corn tasting honey. You'll break even. Making corn syrup is nothing but industrial chemical process that is well suited for mass production, it requires minimum of labor that keeps unit cost low and us fat. Making honey is not possible to scale up to the comparable mass production levels and there is no way around labor yet. Do your math.
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There is no evidence, no documentation, no studies, nothing I have ever seen or heard of to suggest that any drug can increase honey production.
Obviously I can't explain and you can't understand the simple fact that dead, sick, hungry bees don't make honey. Thus agro-chemicals & drugs used to keep bees alive, reasonably healthy and fed increase honey production from zero. There is more than enough of evidence for that.
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Honey comes from flower nectar. Nectar must be collected by bees. To increase nectar collection means you need nectar flow and more bees. There is no drug that will make flowers produce more nectar or more fructose in their nectar. Bees can only fly so fast, and you are not going to speed bees up.
There are plenty of chemicals that can increase yields. Monoculture flowering plantations demand massive amount of chemicals to keep going. I've been to as eye can see California orchards (where NOTHING, literally nothing, can survive except "production tree units"). Killing off nectar collecting competitors and bee predators helps nectar collection too.
This year was extremely wet in Ohio, planting season was off for quite a bit, and guess what, despite all that moisture and rain, most of the unplanted/unsprayed fields remained 100% barren for weeks and months, without a shred, a sign, a hint of plant life. Farm soil is saturated with agro-chemicals for years to come, yet, if that field would be planted with "roundup etc. ready" clover you would claim that "there is nothing that can increase nectar collection".
BTW, farmers are not supposed to overdose on herbicides like that, farmers are not supposed to turn Ohio rivers into algae infested dead zones with fertilizer run off, it's not what USDA and application instructions say. Yet, according to you, we all to believe that honey producers are different from Ohio farmers and they go strictly by the label, always.
Last edited by RememberMee; 11-24-2011 at 11:54 AM..
... Obviously I can't explain and you can't understand the simple fact that dead, sick, hungry bees don't make honey. Thus agro-chemicals & drugs used to keep bees alive, reasonably healthy and fed increase honey production from zero. There is more than enough of evidence for that.
The previous claim that giving drugs to bees will increase honey production remains false.
Of course a sick hive may need meds to overcome an ailment. However once a hive is given meds, it's honey is no longer marketable.
Perhaps the problem here is that you can not understand the simple fact that honey from a drugged hive is not allowed to be marketed.
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... There are plenty of chemicals that can increase yields.
Name one.
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... Farm soil is saturated with agro-chemicals for years to come, yet, if that field would be planted with "roundup etc. ready" clover you would claim that "there is nothing that can increase nectar collection".
So much verbiage, wow, have you found a drug that can increase honey production yet?
You keep claiming that such a chemical exists, and yet, ...
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... Yet, according to you, we all to believe that honey producers are different from Ohio farmers and they go strictly by the label, always.
We're mixing wholesale and retail pricing here... what you see in the stores isn't what the producer is making, there are transportation costs and profits on top.
So, let's go back to the scary corn syrup and honey a moment...
$1.70 for the scary corn syrup, which the keeper cannot produce himself, and therefore must purchase at retail.
His (scary) honey sells at $3.50 retail, but at best he'd only be getting 75% of that as his "cut" = $2.63
Now, the bees eat half of what they consume to survive, and the other half gets converted to honey; so the keeper spends $3.40 (2 bottles of syrup) and makes $2.63 (1 bottle of honey). He's still in the red by 77 cents... and that is not including any of the costs for supplies/meds he may need to purchase to keep his bees healthy or the costs of any equipment he needs to purchase and maintain and the supplies needed to process the honey for distribution... AND giving him a VERY generous percentage.
Meanwhile, back at the farm, a keeper who allows his bees to feed themselves may net less honey for sale, but he is not paying out for feed inputs either.
Let's assume 3 keepers have 50 hives each (because it's a nice even number), and let's assume that each super yields a lb, the hive can fill 2 supers in a season, and it takes 1 super/1 lb to feed the hive over winter. Let's also assume the honey retails at $3.50, with 75% to the producer, and syrup retails at $1.70.
Keeper A allows his bees to collect nectar and keep 1 super to feed themselves over the winter, and he sells the other lb. At the end of the season, Keeper A has made $131.50 by selling 50 lbs and keeping 50 lbs for the bees. He is now up $131.50.
Keeper B harvests both supers and feeds his bees syrup in the winter instead of allowing them to eat their own honey, but he allows them to forage to feed themselves during the season. So he makes $263 by selling all 100 lbs, but he must purchase 50 lbs of syrup to get them through the winter. So 50 lbs @ 1.70, sets Keeper B back $85. So he's still up $178 (a $46.50 profit over Keeper A)
Keeper C harvests both supers and feeds his bees syrup instead of allowing them to forage or eat their own honey. So he makes $263 by selling all 100 lbs, but he must purchase 200 lbs of syrup to get them to make it (the 2:1 conversion), AND needs another 50 lbs to get them through the winter. So 250 lbs @ 1.70, sets Keeper B back $425. He's now down $162.
Arguably, Keeper A will have the least losses and the healthiest bees because he's not interfering as much and will therefore not have as many replacement and med costs... but his honey is also probably selling at a much higher price point.
Arguably, Keeper B is at least producing real honey and doing a decent job keeping his bees healthy. He may have slightly higher replacement and med costs, but his honey is probably selling at a higher price point than $3.50 although not as high as Keeper A's.
Arguably, Keeper C may be able to speed/increase production slightly by force feeding his bees syrup because they aren't expending as much energy flying around harvesting nectar. Therefore, he may be able to sell more units in the year to offset the cost of the winter feed (but that only reduces his overall loss, he's still operating at loss). His bees will not be as healthy as Keeper A & B's, so he will also likely have higher replacement and med costs.
Of course, we can always look at Keeper D hiding in the shadows who raises his bees as ANNUALS. He feeds them nothing, takes each super the minute it is filled which forces the bees to forage harder to make more (which burns them out faster), and then just lets the hive die in the winter so he doesn't have to feed them anything. His only cost is replacing the hive every spring. He may, or may not, come out ahead at that arrangement, depending on the costs to replace the hive and the time it takes them to grow to a size where they are producing enough honey to harvest.
To make a modest living or get rich? Depending on what your goal is....
I find honey to be incredibly expensive in this country. My parents send me honey from south-eastern Europe from a friend that they know that collects it in the mountains, clean, pristine... A big pale, 20 lbs in weight is still WAY cheaper with all the shipping etc. than the crap I can buy in the stores here.
Nothing removed by the way, the only "standard" is that it is the same honey that came our of the hive.
OD
Sign me up! I use honey every day in my coffee, or tea. Wish I had relative's that would send me some honey, and I am from Europe. We used to raise some bees, but found out my Dad was allergic to bee venom. Bye, bye hives.
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I bet producers of of China India and Mexico
