> rational, moral and spiritual.... well this should have been.... rational, ethical and emotional.

It amounts to the same thing, not to worry. 

We should care about bees, beekeepers and beekeeping for all three reasons. Rationally, we know we need a healthy environment and a healthy agricultural system. The presence of thriving honey bees and other pollinators is a health indicator as well as a contributor to the system function. 

When it comes to ethics, we get into tough dilemmas. Something like 50% of the tree species in the Amazon are thought to be endangered now. On the other hand, the magnitude of human suffering due to lack of food and resources is appalling and should overshadow the ethical arguments surrounding the loss of individual plants, which experience no suffering. We could debate that, I am sure. 

The third argument, whether you approach it as spiritual, emotional, or aesthetic, it is the one that moves us the most and is the one most likely to move others. People get very upset when they think about a world without bees, without flowers, without gardens and places to feel safe in nature. The history of the garden goes back thousands of years. 

I tend to disagree with James who said that where bees cannot thrive, humans cannot thrive. Humans live in all sorts of places, like the Arctic tundra, out at sea, in cities where they are seldom out of doors, going from room to car to room. So, people can live in an essentially artificial world. 

But beekeepers can't. We need space for our hives, we need safe clean environments, we need someone to share the golden honey with. The spirit of the hive influences the beekeeper and spreads out from her or him like a slow moving rumor. There's something about beekeepers, they are on to something, everyone should have at least one for a friend. I know I do.

PLB

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