If you stay, I'll stay too. I learned about this forum after taking Prof. Bromenshenk's classes (*highly* recommended!). I was fed up with the opinionated cluelessness that passes for content on so many bee forums and blogs and I wanted to be exposed to the latest, science-based exchanges of ideas without having to subscribe to specialty science journals. But too often lately these exchanges are starting to be no different than the other open internet beekeeping discussions. It's just that there are a lot more degrees, titles and experience involved, but the attitudes are certainly very similar.

I think that there's a large 'silent majority' of beekeepers who are hungry for information from variety of experts and genuinely want to improve their management techniques regardless of the scale of their operations, be it with plants, insects or other people (like neighboring beekeepers with questionable approaches to beekeeping). Call them lurkers, but they are reading, thinking and tinkering and there are precious few places to get this information on beekeeping. The level of personal commentary here is just off putting and frankly I've started to delete a lot of BEE-L threads without reading.

Przemek

---- Kathryn Kerby <[log in to unmask]> wrote: 
[...]
> If I have to be a commodity farmer following one very small subset of chemically intensive practices before my opinions will be valued, then I may as well drop out now.  If, on the other hand, folks are interested in hearing about the other 1001 options which are being used and tested with varying degrees of success by thousands of growers in all parts of the country, I'm happy to share those options.  I would just ask that if folks want that diversity of information, don't shoot the messenger when it's delivered.
> Kathryn Kerby
> Frogchorusfarm.com
> Snohomish, WA

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