after all they'll stop at nothing to keep their businesses going - ie producing honey, and one can't put ethics before profit can we ?!!
S
Having seen all the fuss this comment has called.......and despite defense it DOES sound more like a statement than simple personal opinion...........I cannot see why it was given any more attention than it deserved......like zilch.
I am at peace with my ethics. My clients are at peace with my ethics, including some of the best brand names in the land. My suppliers ditto. My landowners and managers the same. The large number of beekeepers who come to me for supplies and bees likewise. The largest packer in the country is pleased to carry OUR name on the back label as the source of their honey.
As regards producing honey being at odds with ethics and quality bee management? Well that is downright laughable.
The only bees that give a good honey crop, year on year, in sufficient amounts to keep the roof over your head are WELL MANAGED bees. If we do not keep our bees healthy, and in a fit condition, then we go bust. So we HAVE to do it correctly. A bad commercial beekeeper does not stay a commercial beekeeper for long.
We have no incentive to play Russian roulette with our bees genetics and temperament. We know we are not through long years of experience, thousands upon thousands of hive/seasons.
Insofar as judgement is pronounced on the ethos under which Dan and I keep our bees goes, well Somerford has no experience of either place, and I suspect may never have met either of us.
I have had long experience of dealing with such statements, including the very strange reasoning of a certain beekeeper in Arizona, who makes outrageous claims, and when you query them, the person concerned, and their cohorts, come down on you with a torrent of questions and even accusations, but crucially, when you sort out the wheat from the chaff, no actual answer to your intial question. The reason for raising this is that on Bee-L all hell broke loose over similar stuff. The concensus there is that the one who makes the claim/allegation/insinuation is the one who has to justify or retract. Dan took offense at the statement and I can understand why, and to turn round and ask him, who remember made no claim, to justify HIMSELF, is a perverse twisting of reason. The onus is on Somerford to reach accomodation with Dan.
Not with me, as I am not actually at all bothered. I have said already, I know what I do, and am secure with the fact that the bees welfare is, of necessity, the central plank of our management. Thus not faxed at all by something like that being said, as I know it is said from a position of relative ingorance.
I am rather reminded of an old tv ad for Budweiser, where the old wise chamaeleon and the eager thrusting young one were stiing on their branches, and the young one was getting rather infuriated by the croaking frogs.............and the old one said 'Let it go Louis, Let it go.'...........We could do with a touch of that here.
