You must be referring to the beekeeping hobby developing as a "zomg the honeybees are in trouble and we have to halp!". It's trueish that that happened, and th

You must be referring to the beekeeping hobby developing as a "zomg the honeybees are in trouble and we have to halp!". It's trueish that that happened, and that the colony collapse disorders didn't really warrant hobbyists jumping in. On the other hand, I think that hobbyists are doing some of the driving towards better mite treatment practices. It's new eyes on the problem. It's also driven some investment in research. Texas A&M's honeybee (and other bee) research budgets have gone up in recent years, and I suspect part of that is that interest in beekeeping is way up, and part of that has to do with Texas allowing beekeeping as a type of ag activity that can earn one an ag exemption on property taxes but also with the rise of beekeeping as a hobby. > I like a mason bee. Docile and fuzzy, those guys. Even Apis mellifera is fairly docile if, you know, you don't kill any of them. The bees in my nucs never ever sting -- they don't have that much to protect, but also I never kill any at that stage when I inspect those. The real problem with beekeeping is the bleeping Langstroth hive -- it might as well have been designed to kill lots of bees. Even with lots of practice and patience, and having put a lot of effort into finding ways to avoid killing bees, I still manage to kill one or two when I get into a Langstroth hive -- it's infuriating, to me and my bees.