I feel there are a few more things that have to be said here....pardon me if they come off as defensive.
squarepeg said:
i thank you for your work and your willingness to contribute freely to the discussion here on beesource. i know there are many here including me that value your input.
in the end, each of us a personal view on how to approach beekeeping, and i absolutely respect everyone's right to their own approach.
That is all well and good...but from my perspective, it is hard to reconcile this with what you have posted.
i would have liked for the author to have joined the discussion, but i guess he his unable or unwilling to do so. i really wanted to give the benefit of the doubt...
I did nothing deserving of _not_ giving me the benefit of the doubt. You might recall that one of my last posts in the "what would brother adam do" thread, talked about how busy I am. You certainly aren't required to keep track of when I am or am not posting, but if you had clicked on my user name and checked my most recent posts, you would have seen that I haven't posted anywhere on beesource (or any other forum) since this thread started....the above (aparantly not giving me the benefit of the doubt...whatever that means) was posted 4 days after you started the thread. I resent the fact that I have to sound so defensive for not posting in 4 days to a thread you wanted me to participate in.
first, i feel like the subtitle "Everything the budding beekeeper needs for a healthy, productive hive" is, well, overstated. i could give examples, but i won't out of fairness to the author.
If you have a legitimate and specific concern(s), I don't see why it would be unfair to the author to air them. I think it is extremely unfair to take an obvious marketing blurb from the cover of the book and say that it doesn't include absolutely everything. I can break an unbreakable comb, and I don't expect that a band called "free beer" is going to serve free beer at the concert.
I just grabbed a few beekeeping books off the shelf:
On the back cover of "The Complete Guide to Beekeeping" (Morse), it says, "...Dr. Morse has covered all practical aspects of beekeeping in clear and concise language so that anyone readin ghis book should be well on his way to becoming one of the best beekeepers." _all_ practical aspects? ...really?
On the back cover of "Hive Management" (Bonney): "Hive Management offers concise, up to date information on the whole range of beekeeping tasks...." _the whole range_?
On the back cover of "Storey's Guide to Keeping Honey Bees" (Sanford): "Storey's Guide to Keeping Honey Bees Will Guide you through every step of beekeeping,...." _every step_?
Do you sense a theme here? That a bit of hyperbole on a cover quote is pretty much standard in the book business? That it would be absurd to critique any of these books simply because they didn't live up to promises on the cover of including absolutely everything?
Pardon me for critiquing your critique here. If there is something you think is missing, by all means say what it is.
second, although there are no direct derogatory comments to the effect, a beginner reading this book could not help but come away from it thinking that the last thing in the world they would want to be is a beekeeper who feeds, uses standard size cells, or uses any kind of treatments.
I think you are paying us a compliment with the above.....that our thoughts are expressed clearly in our writing...the goal of any writing with a point...with something to say.
with regards to no treatments, there is a slippery slope type comment that is similar to the treatment treadmill comment made by the ex-moderator of the tfb forum on this site, discouraging any use whatsoever of any kind of treatment.
Yes, and I would make the same arguments supporting the "slippery slope" analogy that I have done on beesource. As long as treating remains an option for dealing with issues, treatments will be used to deal with issues. You are not treatment free if you are going to treat when you have a high mite count....because at some point, you will always have a high mite count.
interestingly, i just discovered that mike bush suggests on his site, that one monitor for mites and consider using a noncontaminating treatment if needed during the regression process. in my view, this is the more 'practical' approach, especially for beginners.
...more interestingly is that Mike Bush does not monitor for mites, and isn't using treatments.
so, while there is a lot of good information in the book, for me, the bias it contains overides the usefulness of it. jmho.
...and can you name another book (besides Michael Bush's) that even considers the possibility of keeping bees without treatments? Certainly Conrad's or Chandler's....certainly not any of the more mainstream books. If we can agree that _some people_ are able to keep bees with no treatments...that it is possible to keep bees without treatments, then why are the vast bulk of beekeeping books not expressing their own bias (that your bees will die if you don't use treatments)...even though that bias is demonstrably false? Again, would you really rather read a book where the author writes about practices they don't actually follow? You really think that I should write a book that tells people to and how to treat even though I don't? ....or that only "mainstream beekeeping practices" should be included in any book?
With all of the above said...there is quite a bit in our book besides treatment free, no feeding and small cell....none of which you have chosen to comment on...except to say that it is all overridden by the authors bias, resulting in a useless (the opposite of useful) book.
To quote you again:
in the end, each of us a personal view on how to approach beekeeping, and i absolutely respect everyone's right to their own approach.
...but I shouldn't write about it?
deknow