> The Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner...

Steinerism is "biodynamic", rather than "organic". Biodynamic is more than a little strange in terms of practices, but current biodynamic standards do allow the use of "soft" miticides (oxalic, formic, thymol), so one cannot accuse them of being unreasonable.

Those of us of German extraction likely spend as much time apologizing for Steiner as we do for Hitler, but despite the woo and mysticism, I got myself Demeter Certified back in the mid 1990s for the half of my bees that did not pollinate, but instead, made honey.  Demeter International is the organization the certifies one as "biodynamic", and that certification allowed me to sell my honey at 3x to 4x the price anyone else might charge to enthusiastic health food stores well before "organic" was a thing.  Yes, the practices were utter nonsense, but I followed the rules, as I enjoyed the profits, and none of the practices had any detrimental effect on the bees or the honey, and if one squinted at Steinerism in the right light, one can see how much he copied from Goethe. 

Rudolf Steiner gave poorly-attended "lectures" on everything from physics to religion.  One can read them here https://rsarchive.org/Lectures, and understand how he kept trying different subjects to expound upon, eventually finding a receptive audience among farmers, who apparently lacked the critical thinking skills that tended to make Stiener's lectures unpopular.  His book "Nine Lectures on Bees" "https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA351/English/SGP1975/NinBee_index.html" is a comedy laugh riot for beekeepers of all skill levels, but the practices persist to this day, and they are at worst, harmless nonsense with the unintended positive side effect of prompting the biodynamic beekeeper to pay more attention to his/her bees than the usual "leave alone" approach of so many "treatment free" beekeepers.

Rudolf Steiner should not be mistaken for Max Stirner, another German philosopher who pretty much created the schools of nihilism, existentialism, and anarchism.

Most beekeepers tend to espouse Ouspensky and Gurdjieff's view, a select few, Theodor Adorno.

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