Reminds me of the airmiles issue with imported goods/food.Originally Posted by SDM
Nowhere in the price to UK beekeepers is built in the downstream cost of bringing in non-UK bees which are potential diseased, pest-carrying and poorly acclimatised, let along the hidden pollution 'cost' of the airmiles they travel.
Anyone care to estimate the extra cost?
Reminds me of the length of "a piece of string" !
Last edited by Kate Atchley; 07-01-2016 at 11:37 AM.
When a package of bees sells in Italy for about £30 you could fly them round the world twice and still save money.
My mistake, only 3 times as much. Using your local price of £150
If, for instance, shb was brought over in a package, the cost to the uk tax payer would be in the millions. Anybody who thinks this isn't true haven't thought about the contingency plans being swung into place and all the frantic, costly activity by government agencies trying to close the stable doors in a vain effort to disguise ministerial apathy. Then there's the compo.
Then there's the incalculable cost of the distress felt by beekeepers seeing their pride and joy going up in flames.( I suppose this would be much less if you don't give a toss what bees are in your hives as you could simply ship in some cheap replacements, sigh!)
C4u may not think shb is anything to worry about but all of the above will take place when shb inevitably (with our current negligible border controls) arrives.
Last edited by mbc; 07-01-2016 at 11:39 AM.
If cost was our overriding concern, we'd surely never have started beekeeping in this climate.
No. Packages available locally, in bulk, £88. You can't fly Italian packages three times round the work for a few quid. Add on the cost of frames and foundation, another £8? And in the extra cost of selling in ones and two to a diversity of people who will need a lot of customer service. Not that far off parity I'd have thought. Now apply reduction in demand if all the poor beekeepers supported by imports magically became good beekeepers. You can also reduce the price of local supplies if more people produce their own.
Wouldn't it be great if you could also build into this the hidden cost of importing as mentioned by Kate and mbc?
Isn't it the case that the bees where here naturally before we started keeping them?
Maybe not on the islands, but still, we would have been robbing wild colonies long before housing them on the mainland.
Yes indeed mbc ... long before folk began buying/constructing kit for the bees and all the paraphernalia we now use. And Varroa has surely knocked out "naturally" dwelling colonies in most areas now.
I haven’t been a big supporter of campaigns to buy local bees or Amm etc in the past
This thread had taught me a thing or two about what really goes on in the beekeeping world,
Perhaps its time to have a rethink that and put my shoulder to the wheel
Last edited by The Drone Ranger; 09-01-2016 at 05:32 PM. Reason: just repeating myself so chopped most of it
http://www.beeculture.com/catch-the-...sed-in-europe/
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