Oh I don't underestimate certain aspects of benefit that flow from the amateur sector.Originally Posted by drumgerry
A classic case would be casual or natural world pollinators. Scotland would not be exactly as it is today with no honeybees around, and when you are away up little valleys, or in urban areas, or the dripping wet west, commercial beekeepers are as scarce as the proverbial hens teeth. Because it does not pay.
The pollination of the hawthorns and all manner of fruit and seed bearing plants, far from an commercial hives, depends heavily on amateur beekeepers in tandem with other pollinators. That this has no economic benefit is untrue, its part of the natural well being of the country, and that has a value. In a document prepared some years ago in response to the EFB crisis this value was considered and a vague figure put on it. Its not just here either. I am friendly with a significant beekeeper in the Rhone valley, and last time we spoke he received 15 euros per hive per year to support his bees, just for their value to the ecosystem.
Then there is the appliance trade. The UK trade is very heavily dependant on the amateur sector as you are where the really big margins lie. You pay very high prices here, even for seconds, and without you there would be less employment.
However the major measurable economic gains come from honey trading. I have 8 households total dependant on our production. Other bee farms will add quite a few more to that. That's the direct wages aspect. We spend in the environs of 300K per year, much of it locally. The honey goes on to a packer, where 350K of honey generates more activity and goes out from there as a 500K business, and finally at retail it is a 1M turnover activity...probably a little more actually, and that money goes into peoples wages all the way through the system. Add in the other bee farms and you can see this is actually getting to the point of being a minor but important and iconic section of the Scottish economy.
Then there is the unmeasurable but real pollination uplift to crops. That probably is a lot more than the honey value. Even grouse moors benefit. Several gamekeepers have told me that a moor that gets honeybees on it each year sets more seed which is more winter food for the grouse which in turn means more healthy grouse on the moor. More grouse equals more value of the land.
Value is all around us and is not the exclusive preserve of the professional.
As for the beekeepers finding other work? Well both sectors have upper and lower extremes in them. Larger beekeepers who cannot do the job tend to fail by natural cull (financially of course), but it is undeniable that there is a wide spectrum of abilities, levels of interest, and competence across the professional sector. The worst tend to fall by the wayside.
Economic pressure to succeed is less significant, even absent, in the amateur sector. The very best and the very worst of beekeepers are to be found there, and also the best and worst presented honey. When time becomes valueless and the honey is only sold in small amounts if at all, it then no longer matters how much or how little effort is put into the presentation of the finished product.
Irrespective of competence or diligence, this is not an easy field to make a satisfactory living in. I have always thought the boundaries between the sectors are pretty blurred, especially in the 20 to 50 hive range, but outwith that too, and there is some movement of people between the two. The close relationship that developed between the SBA and the BFA in Scotland after the EFB outbreak is one of the best things to come out of it, and long may it continue. We are at our best supporting eachother.
The credit mostly falls to Phil McAnespie and John Mellis for that.
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