Today I attended an intermediate beekeeping day with Monty Bees at Gregynog Hall, Mid Wales with around a dozen other people all with some (though ranging) levels of practical beekeeping experience. The day was taught by Brian, a second generation beekeper with over fifty years of experience whose wealth of knowledge and ease in front of an audience made the day extremely worthwhile.
For me the major benefit was not only delving into the material but in Brian's manner. So far as I skim the surface of the mysterious world of keeping bees I have met many affable 'beeks' who quite rightly have their own methods and preferrences because of the things they have experienced or just 'feel' to be right. However beekeeping's unofficial mantra "if you ask two beekeepers how to do a particular thing then you will receive three answers and they may all be right" can sometimes cause them to dilute their advice or give it in such a self deprecating way that as a newbie you still feel like you haven't been given an actual answer. At least at times I have.
With good humour Brian was a bit more direct. Careful as he was to re-iterate that no technique is absolute he was not afraid to tell us what he really thought and even go as far (shock horror for beekeepers?) to explain why he thought several traditional beekeeping techniques made no sense to him.
So why was this different? For me the fact that he is a second generation beek with fifty plus years of experience helps but what really impressed me was the fact that he has obviously devoted a massive part of his life not just to beekeeping as many have but in the pursuit of diverse beekeeping. Having handled bees in the US, Australia and Tanzania with all their idiosyncracies and environmental needs he has also collected (and presumably read) over five hundred beekeeping books that reach as far back to the 1700's. This meant that he seemed able to quantify his opinions not just because a method 'feels' right but because there was an observational, historical or scientific reason be they his own or someone who has gone before. This broad experience and his obvious interest in researching 'how' and 'why' seems to have left him very accepting of the various methods and motivations of breeders and amateur keepers which is refreshing. Comparrisons drawn from commercial practices where not designed to create a moral arguement but made neutrally and simply designed to identify why various practices have been developed and what can be learned from any sector with a view to making us better, stress free beekeepers. When comparing domestic techniques against those used by comercial keepers prompted us to question whether some of the mainstream modern gadgetry is really needed it wasn't just ruminating pub talk because he could point out the benefits and pitfalls of each system with the easy confidence of someone who has seen both in action. That made beekeeping clearer to me in one day than any of the books I have read, videos I have watched or people that I have chatted to thus far.
For example, when discussing hive types he politely refrained from admonishing anyones personal choice and in fact highlighted the problems with his own hives but was able to explain, from memory, how and why each hive system was produced. Whether those that created the common hive systems were driven by bee studies, commercial gain, material availability or an excess of free time created by only working on Sundays (many were apparently vicars). His enthusiasm for identifying the background of beekeeping techniques and asking potentially controversial questions makes me think there might be a pathway to not only learning by amassing our future successes and failures but by looking backwards and questioning why a technique has become mainstream, how it was motivated and therefore judging its application to current practice and our own desired outcomes. This can only improve knowledge and speed up our learning experience.
Such an intellectual approach may well horrify many experienced beekeepers to whom 'feeling' the bees out is so important and to those that have contributed to the many (very many) texts on the subject of standard practices but in my mind having someone that causes you to consider why some techniques have become vogue or who points out that many books that are considered beek bibles were written some years ago and provide advice that may not be in keeping with current temperatures and seasons is invaluable. Similarly explaining the issues of swarm risk in terms of hive type on the basis of there being 61000 potentially available cells in a Langstroth versus 84000 in one and a half National Brood was both an interesting and refreshingly stark means of provoking thought. I'm sure most beekeepers have worked this stuff out for themselves but as a new beek it is great to have the information put across so succintly that after one day we feel that we can make better choices about our approach for our bees.
All in all the pleasant company, insightful questions from the group and good biscuits created a great learning atmosphere and I'm sure that we all came away with valuable information that will not only develop the way we manage our hives but fire up our motivation for the coming season.
No comments:
Post a Comment