Lifted, shamelessly but with reverence, from Ted Hancock's writings on Bee-L. We do need to talk about imports.

----- Forwarded Message -----
From: Ted Hancock <xxxxx@XXXX.XXX>
To: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu
Sent: Sunday, 30 September 2007, 19:59
Subject: [BEE-L] Beekeeping on Mars

If they had beekeeping on Mars, I expect they'd talk about importing bees
from Earth. The conversation mite go something like this:

Dip: We're so far from the sun it's hard to raise enough bees. We need to
start importing them from Earth.

Ip: I don't have trouble raising enough bees.

Dip: That's because you're not a real beekeeper.

Ip: What makes you say that?

Dip: Because real beekeepers want to import bees from Earth.

Ip: That's not a rational argument.

Dip: I don't have to be rational, I'm a real beekeeper.

Ip: But Earthling bees have some nasty pests and diseases that we don't
have. If we import them they could kill our bees.

Dip: You're just fear mongering. Even if we did import exotic pests they'd
never survive in our Martian atmosphere.

Ip: How do you know that?

Dip: Look at Earth's moon: varroa can't survive there and we're a lot
further away from Earth than the moon.

Ip: Oh boy. Maybe we could allow the importation of genetic material under
strict scientific protocols.

Dip: A pox on your scientific protocols. Scientitst have no idea what
risks we need to take in order to make a Martian living. If we don't allow
legal cross cosmic distribution of bees, someone's just going to smuggle
them across anyways.

Ip: Now who's fear mongering?

Dip: You need to think more like a human.

Ip: That's hard to do when I'm an intelligent being.

So Mars allows the importation of bees from Earth. Varroa, trachea et. al
prove to be much more virulent on Mars and suddenly no one can keep bees
alive longer than six months.

Ip: Well, this is great. Now we're totally dependent on imported bees from
Earth.

Dip: That's right. And I hope you appreciate my foresight in pushing for
those imports. If we didn't have them our industry would be dead now.

Ip; Youch! I think my brain just exploded!

Dip: Good, I can steal your beekeeping area.


************************************************** ****
* Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: *
* http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm *
************************************************** ****