1/25/08 Honey of a Job

A honey of a job. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report. Recently with the onset of the bee population disappearances, there have been a number of articles suggesting that this might be a good business venture to get into. While it is true that there are fewer people getting into the business of bees, it is not something you can just jump into. Dean Cannon with Tate Honey Farms says it's not as simple as it once was. CANNON: In the old days a guy could relatively throw boxes out in the yard and the bees would fly in them and you just pull the honey off at the end of the year and you don't have to do anything. And now in the spring you've got to get into your bees once a week  couple times a week or so just to keep going  to figure what's going on because if you loose the brood cycle then you're not going to get a good honey flow and then you're not going to have them go through the winter right so, springtime you really trying to get ready to get through the winter time and get that honey crop. You got to look months and months ahead of time, you just don't start and hope it happens. So is it something you should look at as a business venture? CANNON: Not if you've never done it before and you want to get into a business  I'd rather play the stock market than play the bee market right now just because we really don't know what's going on. Cannon is talking about the mysterious disappearance of thousands of bees nationwide. It's not unprecedented but it does have scientists stumped. Cannon hopes that things work themselves out. CANNON: We've got universities from all ends and even Europe are studying it and England and so I suspect they should have something this year or couple of years to see what's really happening  and probably by that time it's all been whittled out naturally and we're all back into the regular cycle. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.