There are some useful trips but they cost extra
IMHO not enough to justify the cost. I found it too expensive for what I got out of it
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Two replies in one post.
1. Are you seriously suggesting the trips should be free? Your subs would not even cover the flight ticket to the various overseas destinations. They are not expensive anyway for what you get. Or the domestic events? They are a lot cheaper if you do not stay in the group hotel or take the meals included in the package.
2. The cost of BFA membership is an absolute bargain. The same insurance cover for me would cost at last estimate...a couple of years back.... £14300. I have a bigger payroll today so I think it could be over 20K now.
Even the public liability that is now an absolute requirement of many of the larger landowners we go to would, on its own, cost us as much PER 100 hives, as the BFA membership in total. Thus even that single aspect of insurance would set me back 25 times the BFA subs. Its an absolute essential in todays 'claims culture' environment.
Unless you are running uninsured, or are under the impression you have better cover than you really do, I can see no way, even for the insurance alone, that BFA membership is not worth the money. To me it is worth multiples of the subs, even before the changes at the last meeting that made it so much cheaper for me. (Wrong decision IMO....the broadest backs should help carry the load better).
Only way you can justify the claim you do not get enough back from it is if you simply regard it as a cost and in the absence of an actual identifiable incoming cash amount decide there is no return. Forget all the things, in particular insurance, you cannot get cheaper elsewhere. You have to take these savings into account.
No doubt you will decline to accept any of the benefits of the increase in profile bee farming now enjoys thanks to the activities of the board and staff that the rest of us pay for? I have had this discussion with a few who have left, or declined to join, citing no return for their money. At the same time running off with pollination contracts the BFA found for them.
I think we are stronger hanging together, and the cost is negligible.