Greetings! I stumbled across a collection of “Empire State Honey Producers Association” newsletters at the library. For a while it was edited by Richard Taylor. He wrote this little piece in 1975: > I was always brought up to believe that it is no expression of disrespect for another person to disagree with him. What *is* disrespectful is to express your disagreement in a rude or dogmatic way or, worse yet, to try to prevent someone from expressing his own honest opinion, or to misrepresent that opinion to others, or treat the honest and sincere expression of an opinion with which one happens to disagree as some sort of offense. I was reminded of this when someone at our summer meeting, whom I do not know, accused me of having taken “pot shots” at my friend Roger Morse, when I had questioned some very minor points in his splendid book on beekeeping. Beekeepers do not have to agree with each other. Courtesy requires that they disagree with mutual respect, each protecting the *other’s* right to say what he thinks, no matter how mistake it might seem. We beekeepers agree on a lot of things. We don’t agree on everything, whether it be the use of queen excluders, the use of antibiotics, or whatever. What we must agree on is the right of every member of our association to say what he thinks on any subject without fear of reproof from anyone. < posted by Peter Borst, November 2006 -- Visit www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l for rules, FAQ and other info ---