I enjoy congruence, when seemingly random bits of information on similar subjects converge. Novel ideas are often inspired by news nuggets from diverse sources that connect by a common thread. Today’s blog about the influence of corporate contributions on academia…
Whatever Happened to Pastoral Beekeeping?
I began to keep bees in the 1970’s, when beekeeping was still the most pastoral of pastimes. I vividly recall long days of tedious repetitive physical labor, the heft of honey-laden supers, that inexpressible feeling of turning off a blacktop…
Why Aren’t African Bees Collapsing?
Honeybee colonies are dying, about one-third of all hives globally each year, an enormous tragedy for bees and beekeepers alike. There’s not a single cause, but rather a congruence of interacting issues including pesticides, diseases and pests, among others. But…
Unintended Consequences
Most of us are aware by now that antibiotics are overprescribed for human use and overused in animal feed to increase livestock weight. The consequences are tragic; disease-causing bacteria develop resistance when repeatedly exposed, and many antibiotics have become ineffective.…
Jonathan Swift, Socrates, Bees and Dialogue
I’ve never been overly impressed with the Socratic method as dialogue, although it was described as such in the 399 BCE book Dialogues, in which Plato recorded conversations between Socrates and his disciples. These are sharp exchanges with pointed and…
Toxic Soup
The honeybee crisis continues; one-third of all colonies die each year around the globe, and we know why. It’s not one factor, and our deepening understanding of the multiple stressors that are killing bees has clarified the extent of our…
Bee Time: Lessons From the Hive
We finally have a title for my upcoming book: “Bee Time: Lessons from the Hive.” Authors, unless they are considerably more famous than I, don’t get to choose their book titles. You can suggest, and I have, but it’s the…
Difficult choices
Honeybees are known for their collective capacity to make good choices. For example, when faced with a decision about whether to forage on flowers yielding copious amounts of nectar vs. those that are weak nectar producers, colonies learn quickly to…
“Dialogue in Bee Time”
I’m very excited about a new book coming out in the fall of 2014, tentatively titled “Dialogue in Bee Time: Lessons Learned from the Bees” (a title which is quite likely to change before publication). It’s being published by Harvard…