Aug 18, 2010
It is natural for beginners to ask questions - I encourage it
and this is why we have a thriving Natural Beekeeping Forum with
over 3,500 members around the world. Often, when I give a talk, I
spend as much time answering questions as I do speaking, and that
is how I like it - it's always more interesting to be responding to
genuine interest in people than to be just talking at them. And
when I don't know the answer, I say so.
As we accumulate experience, I think one of the most common things
I hear is not so much that all our questions are answered, but that
we find ourselves asking more and more of them - not necessarily of
others, but of ourselves. Questions like, 'why do I do it this
way?' and 'is there a better way to do this?' and, best of all,
'what would happen if I did this?'.
For me, it is vital that I go on questioning everything I do with
bees, to make sure I don't get stuck in doing things only one way
'just because that's the way it's done'. Whenever I see someone
doing something mechanically, I am likely to ask them why they do
it, and if they can't come up with a better answer than 'because
that is the way I have always done it', then I'm liable to ask a
lot more questions! And that's what I like to do to myself.
And this is why I like the way we can discuss new ideas on the
forum, and why we generally don't go in for 'laying down the law'
of 'natural beekeeping'. We are a broad church, and we welcome
people with no experience (even those who ask 'what does a honeybee
look like?') as well as those who have been looking after bees for
decades. By and large, we like to encourage the attitude of 'have
you tried this' rather than 'you need to do it this way'.
Every month or so I receive an (un-asked for) email from a woman
who claims some sort of hot-line to the mind of Rudolf Steiner, and
on this basis makes largely unintelligible pronouncements about the
way we should be keeping bees. She has convinced herself that
'there is only one way'.
As a lifelong dissenter from all things religious, I have an
abiding dislike of dogma. I can see the damage that has been done
in the world by the blind following of rules, and the last thing I
want is to be making more rules. So I encourage everyone
participating in the great experiment of 'natural beekeeping' to
ask more questions, use your senses to seek answers from the bees
themselves, and don't get bogged down in the pronouncements of
people with axes to grind or 'gurus' to follow.
Think for yourself. Ask questions of yourself and other people. Take nothing for granted.