Bee Culture Feb 2013 Page 47

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I read this article in Bee Culture and thought about the overload of information I had in my first few years of beekeeping and thought this article might be relevant to other beekeepers as well.
Ski

Bee Culture Feb 2013 Page 47
Have You Hugged A New Beekeeper Today?
By Tim Moore
People new to beekeeping are often surprised by the number of generous, knowledgeable, experienced beekeepers willing to help them. Beekeepers are genuinely nice people. The problem is that every beekeeper has a different opinion on just about every topic of beekeeping. Add beekeepers together with monthly magazine articles, online forums, and the information from the speakers at beekeeper association meetings – the information overload, much of it conflicting, makes your head spin.

“Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense” - Siddhartha Gautama

A Buddhist Monk wrote this passage at around 400 BC (maybe a Beekeeper?). I often recall the wisdom of that quote when I‘m confronted with conflicting information from multiple sources. I think we all seek reason and common sense – at least some form of reason and common sense that we can live with. Reason and common sense evolve over time based on one’s own experience and knowledge. Knowledge is gained from learning. Experience is gained from doing.

The joke about getting twenty different opinions from ten different beekeepers is no exaggeration. Every beekeepers opinion is a product of their personal combination of knowledge and experience. Some beekeepers are very knowledgeable - obsessively reading and learning, but have little experience; some beekeepers have years and years of experience but little knowledge. Most of us fall somewhere in between the two. No two beekeepers are going to have exactly the same combination of experience and knowledge, hence the difference of opinions.

Don’t believe that because you are new to beekeeping that you opinions and ideas don’t count or have less value than anyone else’s. When a relatively inexperienced Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerburg, and a multitude of other newcomers had an idea, they didn’t let themselves become shackled by the conventional wisdom of their time. They marched to the beat of their own drum.

Be prepared to change your opinion as you gain experience and knowledge. Don’t become so steadfast in your opinions that you cripple your own growth. More importantly, don’t become so steadfast in your opinions that you don’t hear what others have to say – or discourage others to have their own opinions. Its easy to fall into a belief that only some of us have exclusive right to reason and common sense. There’s a lot of comfort in thinking that only our opinion counts – because it takes so little effort.

The new ideas that are going to solve the beekeeping problems that we are dealing with now and in the future are propbably going to come from new beekeepers. Chances are very good that those answers that we seek but haven’t yet discovered to save beekeeping will have always been in full view of all of us.

New beekeepers should get experience by trying different ideas and different combinations of ideas. Average beekeepers doing whatever average beekeepers are doing, thinking about whatever average beekeepers are are thinking are guarantees to get average beekeeper results.