In my tiny corner of the beekeeping world, in Newfoundland (Canada), our fledgling beek association tries to make science-based policy decisions and has established a “Scientific Advisory Committee” to assist the board of directors with such decisions. We have no dedicated honey bee researchers in the province either at the local university or federal or provincial governments.  Very few of our association members read the scientific literature related to apiculture and those who do, or who are capable of it, are small scale beekeepers with scientific credentials in non-apicultural disciplines (e.g., fisheries, medical and social sciences).   This is a major challenge for the association in that the job of doing the “research” to develop wise policy positions, give guidance to practical beekeeping matters (e.g., related to the significance of consistent negative DWV test results, the value of qPCR testing for Nosema spp., etc.), and interact credibly with government agencies falls on the shoulders of only a few people, all volunteers.  

Furthermore, conducting our business in a properly democratic manner wherein we engage our members intelligently is a challenge, when few of them read authoritative beekeeping texts let alone scientific journals.  We publish a light-weight provincial newsletter, and our members also have access to HIVELIGHTS, published by the Canadian Honey Council.  An unknown number of our members read ABJ, BE, or other beekeeping journals/magazines.  It appears that what reading gets done is mostly confined to social media such as Facebook groups.  

Rather than treat my fellow beekeepers as idiots, I prefer a long-term educational strategy that consistently exposes our members to relevant science and encourages them to consult it, even if it’s in summary form or journalistic formats.  We cannot have an intelligent discussion about important matters such as risk assessments related to bee importation unless the baseline of apicultural knowledge is sufficiently elevated.  Getting that baseline high enough for intelligent discussion and meaningful participation in our honey bee democracy is an ongoing challenge.  

It seems to me that “dumbing down,” scientific illiteracy, and populist distain for scientific expertise is part of a bigger societal problem, which ripples throughout the beekeeping community and which may be reflected in popular apicultural journals/magazines such as ABJ and BC.  I don’t have a solution to this problem, but I want to resist it to the greatest extent possible. We need an educated beekeeping community and the popular journals/magazines have an important role in this education! 

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