The Agrinautica

   First let me apologize for the poor quality of these graphs, they're photos of slides and my phone camera doesn't focus so well any more (there appears to be shmutz under the lense confusing the focus)



   But on any account, if you are in say, the United Kingdom, increasingly nearly all the commercial honey on grocery store shelves is coming from China.



   And/or you can see the Australian honey industry is being drowned in Chinese honey (I know it's really hard to read but blue line going down is Australian honey exports, red line going up is Chinese honey imported to Australia)




   And here's a funny graph, the blue line headed ever upward is Chinese honey production and that red line staying steady at the bottom is... Chinese numbers of hives!

   Sooooo either they are getting ever better and better and better at producing honey, in a manner that utterly eclipses everyone else, or they're, I don't know, adulterating honey with rice-derived sugar.


   The above slides from a presentation by Dr Norberto Garcia of Argentina about honey adulteration. I of course knew it was a huge issue but his presentation really convinced me that Chinese honey adulteration is absolutely drowning the honey industries in every other country. He had a lot more interesting slides but I don't think I got legible pictures of a lot of them. If you want to know who "the good guys" in honey exports are I do have this barely legible graph, with the outright cheaters or major transhippers of Chinese "honey" in red, countries strongly implicated in repackinging and re-exporting it in blue (really Belgium, really?), countries with major increases in exports that are due to legitimate reasons in green (New Zealand with manuka honey and Brazil is apparently doing major work in producing organic honey), and the countries with huge losses in exports, Argentina, Canada, and Australia are the ones who have strict testing to prevent adulterated honey transhipment but are getting hosed in terms o their own exports because they can't compete with the ridiculously low prices adulterated honey gets slung around at. So I'll add to my perennial advice of buy local honey! with also go ahead and buy honey from Canada, Argentina or Australia ... and American made honey too of course. But seriously in almost any country the honey in the major grocery stores is most likely mostly rice-syrup there's surely a farmer's market near you where you can get real honey and support a real beekeeper ;)

   This morning I finally got through to the Victorian Apiarist Association (VAA) -- the beekeeping club of the state of Victoria. I'd been calling them between two and four times a day for the last week because their annual conventions begins, well, tonight. They don't exactly have _any_ information about the convention on their website or anywhere on the great wide internet. Apparently it was in their newsletter, which I don't get since I'm not a member yet. My only lead had been that I'd gotten the date from the Geelong Beekeeper's Association newsletter, but they said to see the VAA newsletter for details. So all I had was the date.
   And I can tell you I was getting increasingly concerned as by this morning was pretty much the "eleventh hour." And granted the voicemail on their phone line does mention that the phone is only answered on a part time basis but boy had I been trying to get ahold of them.
   Anyway, so they finally answered and told me the town and hotel it would be in and that I could indeed register on arrival. Turns out the convention was in Wangaratta, at the other end of Victoria, four hours drive away!

   So I finished up making frames around noon, told Cato to hold down the fort for a few days, went home, threw a bunch of clothes OUT of my suitcase (it was all in my suitcase still since I just moved in the other day), and I was off!!



   Now this is certainly the most memorable thing to happen during the drive. I look in my rearview mirror and see nothing but the bull-bars and grill of a big rig right on my ass. So when I get a chance I merge into the lane to my left, the slow lane.
   But then I watch as this truck gets right up behind the next car, until it gets out of the way. And then it does it to the next. I'm talking literally half a car length, which is closer than you should get in a small car much less a giant truck. AND keep in mind that none of these cars were slow-poking it, myself and them were all going almost exactly 100 kph, the speed limit.

   Soo notwithstanding my earlier post about driving, there ARE apparently _some_ asshole drivers in Australia.

   Traffic was annoying as I passed Melbourne on the outer ring roads but then once I was out of town on the "Hume Highway" headed north it was less trafficky. The weather was off and on drizzle, but the road was pretty straight, and the scenery on either side was cow pastures and sort of sporadic tree cover. It was weird to realize I'd apparently already been this way, on a random roadtrip I went on with a friend earlier.

   Australia has some great funny place names, and when a sign came by announcing the next two towns to be "Violet City," and "Dookie" I grabbed for my phone to take a picture of the sign for y'all, but was far too slow.

   Unfortunately it was getting dark by the time I pulled in to Wangaratta, but it was about six and the initial social evening event didn't begin till 7:30. so I walked down the street to find dinner. Happened upon an indian place which sounded good. I was the only one there when I walked in which was a bit alarming but it later got quite a few more people in. The dining room was cozy and being the first one tehre I got to snag the table just beside the brick fireplace that had actual logs crackling in it, which was just delightful.
   And then when my food came (some kind of chicken stewed with fenugreek and garlic naan, and lassi to drink), omg it was to die for. Possibly the best indian I've ever had, including that place in Addis Ababa I've been raving about for years. If you're even in Wangaratta, Victoria, Australia, I highly recommend Tandoori Paradise!!!
   Spent ten minutes trying unsuccessfully to log in to yelp to give them a rave review (at the end of a tedious registration process it told me my email was already registered, but didn't like any of my usual passwords paired with that email address) and eventually threw up my hands and gave up on being a good yelp contributing citizen.

   Once the social evening began I determined there were probably about 100 people there. As usual they were mostly old stodgers and I could quite possibly have been the youngest person in the room. The few people I talked to often led off with "so you're getting into bees are ya?" which I thought was funny.

   Anyway, the conference proper begins in the morning, I'm looking forward to seeing how the Victorian Apiarists hold a convention! (: