Eric as you seem to know all the answers.
Nope.
Just that I'm fed up with the pain (to quote MC) of buying gear that turns out to need work to make it efficient and useful, and spending time and money doing it.
Any number of examples. Here's one: years ago when M'more brought out the green box feeder it seemed a good price etc. Should have bought one but had faith, so bought ten; within a year the floor ribs that kept the box level were warping. Boxes rocked about and let out heat at a time of year when it mattered. Not much to do but shave them level, but of course that eventually made the problem worse.
Rang M'more and they confessed readily to the structural fault, which had since those early days been resolved. As I didn't find out about the problem until I used the boxes (later than when I bought them) and had since taken a cutter to them, I could hardly claim a refund. They're sitting in an apiary gathering grass. You want them?
Seems that many don't care about poor design or workmanship and would rather put up and fiddle a solution. If a mainstream manufacturer - cars, cereals, curtains, it doesn't matter - put out a product with the faults that beekeepers tolerate, there would be complaints and recalls and compensation. That costs, so generally manufacturers spend the money upfront to eradicate faults before coming to market. Of course, they're obliged to do some of that by law, but the other benefit is that Aston Martin ends up with a better reputation than an Austin Allegro and a better chance of thriving in the market. No, I don't want a floor at an Aston Martin price, and a decent floor won't that need that level of R&D cash.
Heard of the Ford Edsel? They spent $250m and hoped to make $350m but it was canned after two years, and this is what was said about it:
"As for the design," Brooks writes, "it was arrived at without even a pretense of consulting the polls, and by the method that has been standard for years in the designing of automobiles — that of simply pooling the hunches of sundry company committees." Sound familiar?
So no, I'm not going to spend £18 on a multi-purpose board (it's not a crownboard) that sort of works, and I'm not going to spend £25 or £35 on anyone's floor if I can make a JBM floor which does the job cost-effectively.
If small manufacturers don't have the skill or cash to design out faults before commissioning expensive moulds, they ought to pause and re-consider whether to jump in and muddy the waters of a small pond. Why not join together and produce one simple system that works? Bees can do it, but then as we know, humans don't think like bees often enough.
apparently OMF have very little effect on mite control, just marketing hype now taken as gospel
