I am not what you would call a seasoned veteran of beekeeping like most of 
the contributors to this list.  I’m a hobbyist.  I’ve been at it for about 
five years now and I am up to about six hives in my back yard and 
elsewhere.  I do have a degree in zoology but I never pursued a career in 
the life sciences.  I only offer this in the way of a grain of salt to be 
taken when considering what I am about to say.
    A couple of years ago I mentioned to the list a prediction made by 
Rudolf Steiner, almost a century ago, regarding the collapse of beekeeping, 
which was, according to him, to take place right about this time.  At the 
time I had no way of gauging the accuracy of his prediction or the 
soundness of his basis for making it, and I still don’t.  He was an 
influential occult spiritualist whose teachings have a wide following even 
to this day.  As I remember, his main concern for the future of beekeeping 
was due to the rising popularity of the practice of artificial 
insemination, which he thought was a bad idea.  I don’t think I give 
Steiner any more credit that he has coming to him for making a prediction 
that may or may not be coming true before our eyes, but it has given me 
food for thought when I read about all the beekeeping bad news, and 
contemplate what bees are, and how their relationship to humans came to be 
what it is.
   My main understanding of the current state of beekeeping comes from 
reading this list.  From it I have formed a general impression that 
beekeeping has evolved into something quite different than it was a hundred 
years ago when Rudolf Steiner made his prediction; not for everyone but 
just in general, and especially in the developed nations such as the United 
States and Canada where agriculture is so… so big.  Obviously commercial 
beekeeping and agriculture have evolved together, emerging as very large 
scale operations which have a degree of codependence upon each other.  From 
my background in biology I have a very general understanding of the 
complexity of the evolution of biological systems, and of the dynamics of 
populations.  If I think of the honey bee as a naturally occurring organism 
which has evolved over vast expanses of time to adapt to a somewhat broad, 
but never the less limited range of environmental conditions, I am able to 
vaguely imagine a set of parameters which are ideal for the species as a 
whole.  It would be tempting to exclude human intervention from this 
picture, but it can not be denied that, at least up to a point, the success 
of Apis mellifera is, in fact, due to human exploitive activity.  Having 
said that, it is at the same time hard to see how the current extent of 
this exploitation can further the long term interest of the honey bee 
species.  There are many aspects to this dilemma, but one that surely can 
not be ignored is the discrepancy that exists between how bees would 
distribute themselves in nature, and how they are forced to exist in medium 
to large scale beekeeping operations.  Beyond that there are the processes 
that are involved in generating enough bees and queens to keep this 
industry supplied.  How close to nature, or should I say how far from 
nature have these techniques and processes become?
    I would not argue, as some do, that we should get our honey, like the 
bears, from trees and hollow logs, but I do think that it is a mistake to 
think that there is no limit to how far you can take a living system from 
its naturally designed way of existing, without eventually finding yourself 
way out on a limb with it.  That is where it seems to me beekeeping and 
agriculture in general, is going or has gone; out on a limb.  No one knows, 
least of all me, just how far out on a limb we are, nor how long we can 
stay there before it breaks, but it seems clear that a correction is being 
made even as we speak.  It also seems clear that this correction will be 
motivated by purely economic reasons, not by any highly conscious level of 
understanding of what is optimal for bees.  In fact that doesn’t seem to be 
the main thrust of the conversation.  It’s more about how can we keep this 
ship flying with parts missing.
        
Steve Noble
        

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