> Giving advice is fraught with peril, anyway. 
>
> I am sure you have had the moment when 
> someone comes up to you and says: 
> "I did exactly what you told me to and ... "

No, never.  
Not even once.
I do not tell them "what to do".

Instead, I help them figure out what questions to ask themselves.

I provide a few facts that might help, and ask questions that can be
answered as the beekeeper pleases.
But I am not going to answer the question for them.  "Give a man a fish", ya
know...
The primary questions tend to simplify down to "What are the bees trying to
do now?" and "How can the beekeeper help them do that?"
The underlying assumption here is that one cannot win by fighting with one's
bees, or by trying to frustrate their intentions.

By taking this approach, I have no "students", I have only colleagues.  They
make their own choices, but they make them based upon measurable criteria
when I can help them.
One is only a "student" for as long as it takes to overcome fears and learn
some basic techniques for handling bees with style and panache.
After that, there are simply too many factions, too many "belief systems"
that people seem to desperately WANT to adopt as their worldview.

I find far too many people putting one modifier or another before
"Beekeeping" in a futile attempt to convince themselves that they are
special.  I try to advocate an adjective-free approach, as there is no need
for the beekeeper to attempt to be "special".  If the bees teach nothing
else, they should teach one humility, but when they do not, it is not the
fault of the bees - it is the fault of that beekeeper not paying sufficient
attention to the bees to be properly humbled.  

Remember, keeping a hive of bees for a few years is a perfectly acceptable
4-H project for 9-year-olds, and somehow, the overwhelming majority do just
fine.  Why do we try to make it so complicated when we should simply be
teaching how to inspect a hive without fumbling and while still breathing
steadily, and how to recognize a specific set of known conditions?  

I am not so sure that more than a few beekeepers actually learn from their
experiences, as they cannot learn from that which they do not record.  So
few notebooks in beekeeping is a shame, given the low cost and high value of
a well-used notebook and a pencil.  Many beekeepers learn little from their
bees, and nothing from the season, so they are in the 15th year of being a
2nd-year beekeeper.  :)

I was recently chided for merely posting a link to a new paper noting the
spring blooms and "green up" are significantly earlier than they recently
were.  As if one could claim to be a beekeeper without having a firm grasp
on "the shape of springs to come" and the blooming of the plants upon which
bees forage!  As if consistently earlier blooms and "green-up" (meaning the
END of the spring bloom) were not of concern to a beekeeper. 

Many novices have observed that their bees did not seem to have read the
same beekeeping book that the novice purchased.
I explain that the bees only read the Bible, specifically, "The
Bee-Attitudes".

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html