The only way to prevent them from farming is to . . . pause your game every time you walk away from the keyboard or close the game.
And, you CAN prevent them from farming if you watch carefully and I always pause the game when I leave my desk,
Thank you, I hadn't thought of that. I didn't realize you paused every time you quit; I would get way too bored if my villagers only worked while I was watching them. I'm not sure though, how it's possible to say you haven't missed a single villager. You would know it if you missed one?
By the way lurkily, in ALL the games I have played I have always had my trees boost to 1000,
By "boost" I'm talking about a one-shot, 0-to-1000 all at once. You sound like you may be talking about a regular increase, until they reach their full potential at 1000, which is I think where the confusion lies.
, so not having trained any farmers to be just farmers is hardly irrelevant.
If you pause, you can do that with dedicated farmers if you like, too, you'll just be busier. If you don't pause, it still doesn't matter, assigned to other tasks they will still farm. This is what I meant by irrelevant: their cross training makes no difference to your ability to stop them from farming.
And yes, the honey limit is surprising, though its regeneration is . . . not tremendous . . . what is it, like 2 or 4 honey per hour, something like that?