This came in the latest Buzz:

> The COLOSS “BEEBOOK” is a unique venture that aims to standardise
methods for studying the honey bee. It will be a practical manual, 
compiling standard methods in all fields of research on the honey bee, 
Apis mellifera, and become the definitive, but evolving, research 
manual, composed of 33 peer-reviewed chapters authored by more than 160 
of the world’s leading honey bee experts. Chapters will describe methods 
for studying honey bee biology, methods for understanding honey bee 
pests and pathogens, and methods for breeding honey bees.

Although it sounds like good news, and is for the large part for that 
matter, to me it raises the concerns that arise from any standardization.

Standardization may be a good thing for an enterprise which has fully 
developed and has little evolutionary potential, but can be very 
stifling in areas where little is known and the variables are many. I 
think bee studies fall in that latter category. The recent CCD 
convenient myth is a good example of the kind of hocus-pocus that a 
consensus can conjure up. After all this time we still are still seeking 
a definition as far as I can tell, and trying to agree on where this 
Sasquatch was last sighted, if ever.

Those of us who have been around a while know about the politics of bee 
research and what happens to those whose work contradicts the work of a 
respected and tenured authority or the consensus that has already been 
reached -- or who tell tales out of school -- or blow a whistle on 
matters that the mainstream has agreed not to see.

Anyone care to try to reassure me?

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