> "There is scarcely a week passes but 
> that I get lists of questions which I know 
> wouldn't have been asked had the 
> writers a good book on bees, and had 
> they read that book understandingly."
 - Doolittle

Such hubris was common in writings prior to the "K-T / K-Pg Extinction
Layer" that runs through any chronological stack of bee literature.
Maybe it was appropriate, as every farm had a beehive and even when utterly
neglected, the bees thrived, and made a decent crop of honey.
But the tracheal mites and varroa were the asteroids that led to the
extinction of beekeepers who neglected math and precision measurement, and
refused to change.  

Sadly the extinction did not lead to a greater incidence of humility among
the survivors. 

There's a koan imbedded in beekeeping - everyone thinks they know better,
and presumes to "help" others.  It's a lot like evangelism, everyone trying
to "save" everyone else all the time.

Nearly any book, REGARDLESS of age can be used by any novice beekeeper to
enjoy his/her bees, to learn to remember to breathe when working the bees,
and to see some success as a beekeeper.  I've yet to hear of any novice
failing due to any book's suggested approach, and I've seen some pretty
horrible attempts at beekeeping books.

But once a beekeeper buys his SECOND book, that is when the wheels promptly
come off. This is the beekeeper's existential Gotterdammerung - two
authoritative books, contradicting each other! More books are purchased,
mentors are consulted, archives are scoured. Illusions are shattered.  New
assumptions are made just as quickly as the old ones are tossed aside.
Somehow, the search is for a belief system that works, and almost no
beekeepers see the inherent self-contradiction in that search.

There never is happiness or peace in this approach, as the conceit that the
beekeeper is the primary influence over the success of his colonies is a
basic fallacy that is never admitted by any creator of media for beekeeper
consumption (and I say "media", because we have beekeepers educating
themselves entirely from YouTube videos, from Facebook groups, by referring
to online forums, you name it!)   The problem is, of course, that bees can
survive and thrive even under a wide range of conditions that verge on
outright abuse, leading many beekeepers to incorrect conclusions based upon
their own personal experience with a smaller-than-significant sample, and no
control group.

The damage done by this inquisitive approach is long-lasting, and most
beekeepers don't survive, as they are constantly bombarded with new dubious
claims of superior results from doing this, or that, or the other thing, and
they feel inadequate to the task when their bees do not perform as well as
"authors" claim they should.  

Magazines need to publish new issues every month, and book publishers always
want to offer new titles, so the pressure to produce more "content" is
constant.  The beekeeper feels obligated to "keep up" with the firehose of
purportedly "new information" (which is often two lies in two words), not
realizing that the content is being produced by an industry who failed as a
whole for more than a decade to correctly identify the naked-eye gross
morphology of a mite that was killing every hive it encountered - the mite
was more oblong, and needed a new name (Varroa destructor) rather than the
much less malevolent and roundish "Varroa jacobsoni" assumed to be the
responsible pest. 

So, we are exactly where we were before - everyone can suggest a good
BEGINNING beekeeper book, but there aren't a whole lot of books out there
for 3rd-year beekeepers.  "Advanced Topics In Beekeeping" is invariably a
seminar title, never a book title.  I find this compelling proof that my
general impression is correct. 

The best and most succinct practical beekeeping advice I ever heard was in a
song on the radio - a lyric from "Michael Franti & Spearhead": "...the more
I see, the less I know."
... and I have the notebooks to prove it!

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