Just had a thought. Richard Lochhead is my MSP. Seriously thinking of trying to meet with him about this. Myself and my OH have had dealings with him concerning our disabled son and found him to be a reasonable man to deal with.

So....if I do meet with him I have some ideas of my own of what I'd like to say. Ie concerning the development of a national strategy to help make us self-sufficient in bees. Sounds like an (overly?) ambitious aim maybe but hey you've got to shoot for the stars! My feeling is that if we talk about it endlessly nothing positive will ever happen and those that shout the loudest (in this case the commercial guys) will shape policy. Someone has to do something and it's time the campaign shifted away from eg the banning of neonics towards something which will actually help our bees. If I have to be the one to get the ball rolling on a campaign so be it. And the neonic thing shows that you can get something done if you go about it in the "right" way.

If anyone could share some information with me which I could arm myself with in advance of the meeting I'd be very grateful. The sort of thing I'm looking for is a breakdown of colony numbers in Scotland between commercial and non-commercial beekeepers. I suspect we (the little guys) have more than them which again makes the help they're getting pretty galling. Also if anyone (Calum?) could describe to me how the queen breeding stations in Germany and other European countries operate and how they benefit ordinary beekeepers that would also help.

I don't see why we can't with the proper will and funding emulate how other countries support their bees and beekeepers. Surely that'd be better than throwing money at commercial beekeepers willy nilly. We should be trying to help people like the John Forzey you mentioned DR. And creating more of them the length and breadth of the country.

Am I the only one who is thinking this?