"Competing for the same revenues." Really?
I recognize that what I have been doing is a conflict of interests, between being an Apiary Inspector and a Beekeeper. No argument there.
But competing for the same revenue? Maybe, maybe not.
If I stop producing honey tomorrow, will that give someone else an opportunity to make more? Or for someone else to get more for their honey?
The honey that I sold to the packers, will they pay more just because I drop out? Or if all of the Inspectors with bees drop out. I don't think so. Do you?
And what about the market that I have developed? The market that no one else was using for at least the first 10 years that I was around and am now into? Now that I have developed a local desire for local honey, I'm sure that someone else could step into my place if I dropped out. But no one is trying to now and there doesn't seem to be anyone willing or able to do what I have. In relation to marketing local honey to the North Country. Not near here anyway.
If I dropped out of pollination to the Champlain Valley, that would knock out about 400 colonies from me for 4 orchards. Anybody want that? Let me know. The guys that I pollinate with would have told me if anyone had been snooping around looking for pollination work.
Rick Drutchess, from VT, asked me a couple of weeks ago if I wanted more pollination work in the Camplain Valley. I guess he's looking to cut back on his obligations.
For the amount of honey production that I loose, going to the ochards, I don't know if it is all that profitable.
If I dropped out, then out of state pollinators would fill in to some of that work. Andy Card pollinates the home orchard of one of my "contracts", so maybe he would fill in there. Not that he is an out of stater anymore, really.
So, my point is that if my being a Beekeeper is keeping someone else from being able to make a living at beekeeping, I just don't see it.
And if my being an Apiary Inspector is keeping anyone from being an Apiary Inspector, that sure ain't the case. We can't find enough people willing to do the job.
So, "C o' I"? Sure. In the literal sense of the word. In competition with other beekeepers? Show me how and how that is negatively effecting other beekeepers.
And let's not talk hypotheticals. Let's talk real situations, now. And other real situations that have happened and how they were resolved.
I'd like the Inspectors to be the best, most interested, most up to date persons available.
Perhaps it's too bad that those people just happen to feel that they have to keep bees in order to do Apiary Inspection and Beekeeping in order to keep their families standard of living above the poverty level. If that's not being to dramatic.
In other words, if I had a job with the security that it would be there the next season, and I could afford to just take the unemployment, I never would have had more than just a few colonies of bees. Especially if it had been spelled out to me that I couldn't.