"Correct" spelling of honey bee (honeybee)

[sqkcrk]

sqkcrk:

'WLC' stands for wildlife conservation.
I've paid my 'dues' in the field.

Of course, there's the usual 'equality' message on the bottom of your posts. But, this 'definition' topic goes beyond equality. It's also a conservation of native pollinators issue.

WLC, I always wondered. Just figured it was your initials. I'd love to hear more about your dues. I'm sure I would learn something and come to a better understanding and respect for you.

Like I said, could resist. Trying to be funny. That's why the smily faces. They're supposed to indicate joking.

I have no problem w/ what native Guatemalans call their bee or how they refer to them generally. I call mine honeybees. Or Honeybees, if at the beginning of a sentence. Just like Queens and queens. I'm not real disciplined a guy, so I am not consistent about it.

Are you familiar w/ www.pfspbees.org? If not, check them out. They are all about Bee Friendly Farming.

[sqkcrk]

If cab, produced by Malipona, isn't anything like honey, why are they called bees at all? For the same reason we called Native Americans Indians when they aren't from India, but because, supposedly, Columbus thought he was in India?

Milk and cheese from animals other than cows isn't just called cheese, but is called goat cheese or sheep cheese, as is true of their milk too. Are they all considered bovinus bovinea? I don't think so. Or does this just muddy the waters? And let's not forget Sea Cows, they produce milk too.

[WLC]

sckqrk:

You keep going off topic.

Even though the topic is 'the spelling' of honeybee/honey bees (as usual, it wasn't the main point of the original debate), we know that we're talking about how something as trivial as the definition for honey bee and honey can have unanticipated consequences.

I'd expect that commercial beekeepers/honey producers would do everything possible to protect their own business interests. However, I don't think that they would have expected a 'chain of unintended consequences' that stretches all the way to the rainforest.

It's outside of their normal experience.

[sqkcrk]

One never really knows what consequences ones' actions may produce.

"In Nature there are neither rewards nor punishments, there are consequences." Robert Ingersoll

[hpm08161947]

The evidence was provided in links earlier on in the thread. I've said that they are being excluded from local honey markets. Also, you may have missed the ridiculous situation (in Mexico) whereby they had to call their honey 'divine elixir' because their bees aren't considered honey bees and therefore they aren't producing honey. Furthermore, moisture content standards, which are market barriers to Melipona/Trigona honey produced in the tropics, are being applied.

So I gather you are suggesting that there is an organized effort to exclude Mayan beekeepers from the market place? If so, you probably are correct. At least in Guatemala, if you are Mayan, then you are poor... very poor.I am sure most Guatemalans of Spanish descent would strongly disagree with me. To my eyes, they remind me of the black man of the early part of the 20th century in this country.They are the most subjugated people I have had the opportunity of visiting with. So to conclude that it is an organized effort to keep their honey off the market might not be too wild a conclusion.

[mellivore]

...if you are Mayan, then you are poor... very poor. So to conclude that it is an organized effort to keep their honey off the market might not be too wild a conclusion.

Hmmm, perhaps. I have found in my studies that there is often no need to organize a conspiracy to exclude poor illiterate peasants with few resources from the global marketplace. Life in general seems to have conspired against them sufficiently.

There are dwindling numbers of people keeping dwindling numbers of stingless bees that produce between 2-4 pounds of honey per hive per year. Please read that sentence again and tell me what beekeepers would bother trying to exclude such an insignificant amount of cab from any market. Especially when the AHB down there are producing hundreds of pounds per hive per year. I think the conspiracy against Mayan stingless bees and their human keepers is greatly exaggerated, if not completely fictional.

[mellivore]

If you want to preserve many of the species of plants in the remaining rainforest fragments, you'll need indigenous beekeepers to help get the job done.

I hate to disagree, but let me do it nicely. It could be argued that beekeepers are necessary in the U.S.A., because of the huge amount of acreage of non-native crops we depend on here. But the rain forests do not depend on beekeepers to stay alive, because the rain forests have existed for millions of years before humans inhabited the region. Native insects pollinate native plants there, with no help needed from humans at all. Melipona make up a tiny fraction of native pollinators, and domesticated stingless bees kept by humans for cab production are not only a tiny fraction of Melipona species, but the actual number of native beekeepers is only a handful of people. No, if the rain forests depended on domesticated stingless beekeeping for their survival, they would have vanished years ago.

With that said, Melipona are fascinating and valuable, and I hope we can save them.

[CharlieN]

Are you familiar w/ www.pfspbees.org? If not, check them out. They are all about Bee Friendly Farming.

Ran across this org early 2010 and joined up. Think they're doing a bang up job.

[sqkcrk]

Ran across this org early 2010 and joined up. Think they're doing a bang up job.

Me too.

[mellivore]

The topic was, and is, honeybee/honey bee.

Oh, that is correct, for a minute I thought the topic was about empowering indigenous entrepreneurs, saving the rain forests, exclusionary definitions, oppressive naming conventions and the other off topic subjects that we've tolerated so far.

But yes, honeybee/honey bee. Nobody seems to mind whether it is spelled with one word or two. Nobody seems to think it needs to be spelled "Honeybee" except WLC. We all agree that cab could never be marketed as "Honey," without specific qualifications, and it does appear that the professional consensus in the appropriate fields is that to be a honey bee, an insect must be in the Apis genus.

Very intelligent and very stubborn people on both sides of this issue, but I do have to admit that science, logic, facts and reason only appear to be favoring one side. I have enjoyed this thread, but I have said all I can say in it, without repeating myself or those more informed than myself.

I'll let you boys have it.

[WLC]

I thought that whole point was this: telling indigenous beekeepers, who have kept honey bees and harvested their honey for thousands of years, that their bees weren't 'honey bees', and they weren't harvesting 'honey', was and is the height of arrogance.

Goodbye.

[sqkcrk]

And who is doing that? If they want to call them honeybees I'm not going to know it and they won't hear from me. This is a nonissue.

[WLC]

Here's a piece from the NYTimes that shows how many are reconnecting to their heritage by rejecting the 'hispanic' label:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/04/ny...1&ref=nyregion

I told you that there was a resurgence. Perhaps it's more apparent in major cities rather than out in the 'sticks'.

This is very much related to the issue of how labels and definitions can often be culturally biased.

So, to add insult to injury, not only aren't they keeping honey bees, and making honey, they aren't even a 'real' ethnicity. I'm glad to see that they are pushing back.

Like I said, you can't make this stuff up.

There's at least a glimmer of hope that they will be able to conserve their native honey bees, and the honey that they produce, as well as their cultural identity.