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Affordable beekeeping

30K views 96 replies 28 participants last post by  Acebird 
#1 ·
#38 ·
From what I can tell there area lot of people out there that have made up their minds about many things. all mostly incorrect. And I am talking about bees and beekeeping. If in fact it was known what was correct. we would not bee seeing the problems that we are.

Realizing that current methods are incorrect does not by default give us the answers. What bothers me is the hard headed determination not only for a generation but for decades that these obviously mistaken methods are defended as the way to do it.

Cavemen? Is that really relevant? Sadly it is. I see much that is seriously defended about beekeeping because it would be dishonoring to some guy that figured something out 120 years ago. What I find dishonoring is that not many have taken up his real contribution. and that is figuring out the next best way.
I don't think Doolittle is much offended that we stopped using a candles while grafting. But he does include comments on them in his instructions.
 
#37 ·
I've paid to attend EAS the past few years and on the other end I'm now involved with pricing for our local bee school. I'm not rushing out to sign up for the Penn State Course, but if I should and perhaps learn something that makes me a better beekeeper, than I will have gotten my money's worth.
 
#39 ·
>> '...all mostly incorrect...', '...obviously mistaken methods...'

really dan? those seem like pretty extreme statements to me.

please enlighten us, how have you with so little experience come so quickly to determine that generations of beekeepers with years of practice have gotten in so wrong.

please, when you figure out the 'correct' way, share it with the rest of us, so that we will no longer be 'mistaken'.
 
#40 ·
please enlighten us, how have you with so little experience come so quickly to determine that generations of beekeepers with years of practice have gotten in so wrong.

please, when you figure out the 'correct' way, share it with the rest of us, so that we will no longer be 'mistaken'.
Are you getting a little bit sarcastic here, squarepeg? :scratch:

what's the point? forgive me for saying so, but if are you trying to make yourself look good by making somebody else look bad, it's not working.
:digging:
 
#42 ·
If I gave the impression that formal instruction whether it be Internet or classroom based is a waste of money, let me clarify. I think these classes are probably real good primers for prospective beekeepers who are trying to grasp the basics, are they worththe money? I suppose only the student could answer that at the end of the class. I responded to the question of how an employer would view a prospective applicants ability to be an effective employee. In that context some sort of diploma would mean far less than the qualities I mentioned.
As someone who has literally 10's of thousands of hours logged in a beeveil through the past 40+ years I have still learned a lot on here and some of it from highly observant folks with far less experience than I. There is a wealth of information available on a forum such as this but one of the great distractions is sorting out the wheat from the chaff so to speak. Posters with virtually no experience at all are given as much "podium time" as those who can relate decades of experience. To someone just coming on here it can all be a bit overwhelming trying to grasp who really knows of what they speak and who simply regurgitates second hand information available to anyone capable of a google search. I don't have much trouble making the separation but it bothers me that many inexperienced posters struggle to figure out who is who.
In a learning environment whether it be in a bee yard under the employment of a commercial beekeeper or in a classroom setting where you are listening to a professor's lecture you are in an environment where it is understood that listening and learning is what students do. Employers and instructors will gladly listen to respectful and probing questions but long winded talks about why they are in error would never be tolerated for long.
 
#44 ·
In a learning environment whether it be in a bee yard under the employment of a commercial beekeeper or in a classroom setting where you are listening to a professor's lecture you are in an environment where it is understood that listening and learning is what students do.
For most things this is true but with beekeeping there are too many contradictions at the Professor or Employer level. This is why a forum discussion often results in a debate. As a newbie this is good. As a professor or an employer it may not be so good.

Employers and instructors will gladly listen to respectful and probing questions but long winded talks about why they are in error would never be tolerated for long.
Employers will have their employees do it their way right or wrong. Hopefully you can see the distinction between an employee and a forum member. Instructors (at the college level) are concerned with completing a syllabus on time. It is less of a concern at the college level that the student succeeds.
 
#43 ·
you're right rader, touche'.

please forgive me dan, i should have waited until i had my coffee.

let me rephrase,

does anyone else think that beekeeping practices are 'all mostly incorrect', and that methods are for the most part 'obviously mistaken'?
 
#51 ·
Acebird, I know a lot of engineers, both at work and in my personal life. Ya, not all of them think that what is written in a book or formulated on a computer is gospel or WILL WORK, but the ones I deal with at work tell us to do things a certain way and when we tell them it wont work because of this problem or that, they insist on it until we physically show them why it wont work.

Engineers like yourself push their agendas and ideas without having actual hands on experience, and in that they fail to see what problems could arise and will arise. Example, you have a couple of hives, yet you consider yourself a bee expert and flood this site with comments on something you have no hands on experience with, which makes you look dumb. You might be the smartest person on here crunching numbers and using scientific formulas, but your hands on experience is lacking and in my book that could spell trouble to a person taking your advise, yet you sit there and argue with people that have oodles of hands on experience and have seen the results of doing certain things FIRST HAND.

Not to mention I have seen what you have engineered..................i'll just stop on that note.
 
#57 ·
Engineers like yourself push their agendas and ideas without having actual hands on experience, and in that they fail to see what problems could arise and will arise.
I am sorry that you have to work in that environment. It is an atmosphere that I would expect to see in a large corporation more so than a small company that needs results from it's engineering staff.

BeeGhost I have literally thousands of posts on beesource (my buddy is keeping track and will give you an update from time to time as to the exact count) and many of them I state that I am a newbie plus it is in my profile. So where is the secrecy? Where is there any claim of my "expert" status?

I have gotten complements on my extractor from people that have seen it first hand. It is hard for me to understand your objection to me building a working device from scrap material. Is it the thin dime thing? What really has got you upset? I don't think I am the person you think I am. Certainly not a number crunching engineer that sat behind a desk all my life. Far from it.
 
#54 ·
rader, i'm all for debunking nonsense, and pointing out when statements presented as facts may not be factual.

but i am going to try and be more careful with my tone, and do my best not to insult anyone.

i appreciate you pointing that out to me. :)
 
#58 ·
Stop the presses: I am most likely in a minority here but I kind of enjoy the "birdmans" posts. They are often entertaining and occasionally informative. There is usually a little bait dangling there that you can choose to nibble at your own risk. I read them with a wry smile and almost always move on but every once in a while even I cant resist. I thought his response to me in post #44 was actually pretty good.....but not quite good enough for me to bite. ;)
 
#59 ·
Re: Afordable beekeeping

The $189.00 might be cheap. I started in beekeeping some 19 months back. The internet and a few phone calls have been the only outside assistance that I have received. My bees have survived and are finally prospering, but they did have a rough first year. I am now recovering from knee replacement surgery. As such, I won't be able to travel comfortably until after the first of the year. This spring I intend to travel and visit some beeks within a couple of hundred miles of my place. My driving expenses and motel costs for two of these trips will well exceed 189 bucks.

Let's face the facts, some people learn well in a class room environment, others need the hands-on experience and some lack the discipline to follow instruction. There are many different types of learners. This brings to mind the old Will Rogers quote: "Some men learn by reading, some men learn by observation, the rest of them have to pee on the fence."

I'm an engineer. I supervise drilling hostile environment oil and gas wells. My crew has two safety meeting a day at crew change. At that time we address safety concerns for the next 12 hour shift. I invite all of my crew members to please give their opinion about our upcoming chores and tasks. Before we do a major operation, we have another meeting about procedures, and once again, I ask the input of all members of the work team. Sometimes the lowest ranking person on the crew has the best solution. It has been my experience that engineers are no more dogmatic than other supervisors.
 
#62 ·
Re: Afordable beekeeping

The $189.00 might be cheap. I started in beekeeping some 19 months back. The internet and a few phone calls have been the only outside assistance that I have received. My bees have survived and are finally prospering, but they did have a rough first year. I am now recovering from knee replacement surgery. As such, I won't be able to travel comfortably until after the first of the year. This spring I intend to travel and visit some beeks within a couple of hundred miles of my place. My driving expenses and motel costs for two of these trips will well exceed 189 bucks.

Let's face the facts, some people learn well in a class room environment, others need the hands-on experience and some lack the discipline to follow instruction. There are many different types of learners. This brings to mind the old Will Rogers quote: "Some men learn by reading, some men learn by observation, the rest of them have to pee on the fence."

I'm an engineer. I supervise drilling hostile environment oil and gas wells. My crew has two safety meeting a day at crew change. At that time we address safety concerns for the next 12 hour shift. I invite all of my crew members to please give their opinion about our upcoming chores and tasks. Before we do a major operation, we have another meeting about procedures, and once again, I ask the input of all members of the work team. Sometimes the lowest ranking person on the crew has the best solution. It has been my experience that engineers are no more dogmatic than other supervisors.
Some good observations LS. I have often said that one of the arts of management is having the wisdom to separate the really bad ideas that come your way from the really good ones and you are right the good ones can sometimes come from the most unexpected places. So tell us who are you gonna hire LS, the guy with the degree or the guy with the dirty hands who says he sure needs a job and is willing to learn and do whatever needs to be done? Yeah I know probably an overly simple question in your line where some jobs clearly require a great deal of expertise. But havent many of the best employees started out at the very bottom and learned as they went?
 
#60 ·
Re: Afordable beekeeping

It is an atmosphere that I would expect to see in a large corporation
Ace, you often talk about "large corporations". Can we know what large corporations you have experience with. As for experience, I mean within the walls... Eating Corn Flakes doesn't count as experience with Kellogg's.
 
#61 ·
Re: Afordable beekeeping

i haven't been to a formal class on beekeeping, but i did get a chance to assist working some hives with experienced beekeepers in the beginning. i have done a fair amount of reading, and i have learned alot from the good members here on beesource.

in the end though, for me, and has been posted above by others...

nothing compares to the time spent with the bees,

and maybe more so the failures than the successes.
 
#63 ·
Re: Afordable beekeeping

Jim:

So tell us who are you gonna hire LS, the guy with the degree or the guy with the dirty hands who says he sure needs a job and is willing to learn and do whatever needs to be done?

The above question is not an either/or to me. If I want an entomologist, I am probably going to hire a college graduate from an agricultural school. If I'm hiring someone to work the bees with me, I want the dirty hands, hard working guy. In the oil patch, I contract with service companies and they provide me the personnel. That being said, most of the contract employees are supervised by employees that have come up through the ranks. Some of the services, like well head testing, pressure control, casing crews, pipe thread companies, vacuum truck, rental tools, fishing hands and tools, ..... are almost always headed by non college types that learned from experience. A few of the services, such as geophysical well logging and cementing operations are headed by engineers (even then the work is done by non college personnel.) The crew, roughnecks, are provided by the drilling contractor. In reality, I don't hire anyone.

I love the working people in the oil patch because they have a "can do" attitude. I am not exposed to whiners. Our people "man up" and do their jobs, and almost none of them have a college degree. And, yes, I listen to every **** one of them.
 
#64 ·
Re: Afordable beekeeping

You sure can tell it's the "off season" for most of us beekeepers. lol
It is only a select few engineers (from my experience) that will actually listen to those "beneath" them AND act upon their suggestions AND give them credit (or at lest partial).
Hat's off to you lazy shooter (and the others like you), you are one of the few I speak of.
 
#65 ·
Re: Afordable beekeeping

At UGA, taught by Keith Delaplane….at a bit $300/semester hour, this class runs about $1000. Formal, face to face class time w/lab that includes hands on with all sorts of beekeeping things, including grafting, queen rearing, hygienic testing, etc.
Ask yourself how much time using trial and error and reading conflicting advice would you waste learning these things? Would it be worth a grand?

ENTO 4300/6300-4300L/6300L. Bee Biology, Culture, and Management. 3 hours. 2 hours lecture and 3 hours lab per week.
Oasis Title: BEE BIO & MGMT.
Prerequisite: [(BIOL 1104 and BIOL 1104L or BIOL 1108-1108L) and ENTO 4000/6000-4000L/6000L] or permission of department.
The life history, ecology, behavior, and pollinating activities of honey bees and other bees of the Southeast, including theory and practice of bee culture.
Offered spring semester every odd-numbered year.
 
#68 ·
My wife is a school superintendent in Texas. She has been in education for 40 plus years. She has a doctorate degree in statistics and is a very smart lady. I have listened to her lament about education for all those years. Public education is a paradox. On the one hand, all students are different. On the other hand, all public schools are managed at the upper most level by politicians. The politicians want a one size fits all education for the masses. Hence, the paradox mentioned above. Aside for campaigning for office, what do politicians do well?

When it comes to adult education, such as beekeeping, each individual must act according to their capabilities and abilities. If you are a hands-on learner who has to touch and feel things to learn about them, then get your butt in an apiary and spend some time. If you are one of those people that remember everything you read, buy a book or two. There are some people that like to be lectured about everything. I have one client that works for a large oil company, and when he has a project for me, he wants me to come to his office weeks prior to a job and just lecture him and his staff for a few hours. He says, “I want the information fed to me.” Education is a “whatever works for you” thing.

As I stated earlier, 189 bucks could be a good deal, or then it could ………………
 
#76 ·
Re: Afordable beekeeping

"Here is my question to the forum pointed at commercial operations: Would you pay someone more that has taken this class or would you rather teach this person yourself starting at a lower wage? Once this question is answered then we can determine if the 189 bucks is worth it."

Gee Ace, I didn't realize that you intended to pad your resume enough with this one course for 189 bucks to significantly increase your annual income. Hell, it's 189 bucks, one doesn't have to take a second mortgage on their home for this amount of bucks. For 189 bucks, I would think one should expect some personal enlightenment. Nothing more.
 
#81 ·
Doing something w/out external direction gives one plenty of time to develope bad habits.

My Dad once said "Don't take driving lessons from a race car driver that crashes." Whether that fits or not, I'm not sure.

As an employer, not really, I don't employ anyone, I would rather have an interested blank slate than someoner w/ a little book learning who wants to know the why of every move. I had a helper this past Summer and he was good at helping and waited until the work was done to discuss what we did and what we saw. That was good and helpful.

Whether the Penn State Forum is worth the cost is up to the user. I sure hope you all send Barry 10% of the Penn State cost to support beesource.com so it will continue to be here for our education and entertainment.

SUPPORT beesource.com. !!
 
#82 ·
Mark, I agree that tuition or cost helps reduce the casually interested.

Specifically in regard tot he II courses I think it is more of an issue of providing quality training at an arguably low price. I am not certain what tuition at U.N.R. is not. it changes all the time. but I think we are somewhere up around $200 or so per credit. I think that covers 30 hours of classroom instruction. One of the II courses is 4 days. So $425 for possibly 32 hours of instruction.

Just a comparison to show that the price may not really be that far out of line. and it may be that some portion of this course offering is running on a grant or some other funding.

I don't think the cost of the II courses are set to discourage the curious as much as they are set to assure quality in the instruction.
 
#83 ·
Well said and informative. I have no personal knowledge of course costs and instructors fees. I went to college as a test of my own seriousness in persuing beekeeping as a means of selfsupport. So I base my understanding on that, whether that is the case for anyone else I have no idea.

Back when I went to school, back in the dark ages, college was affordable, for me and my wife, because we were able to get Pell Grants, student loans, and work study. Are such things not available today? It took us a while to repay our loans, but we never felt likeanything was going to be foreclosed on to reclaim the debt owed.
 
#85 ·
It took us a while to repay our loans, but we never felt likeanything was going to be foreclosed on to reclaim the debt owed.
That is because when you finished your degree there was other opportunity for you if by some chance you really didn't take to beekeeping. Today, the unprivileged student is 200,000 dollars in debt and may have no job offers at all when he/she graduates. You can capitalize the loans only so long and that is just digging a hole deeper anyway.
I came out of school with a degree is building construction during the oil embargo. No construction jobs anywhere but I was able to move to Connecticut and learn textile automation and machine design. Yes, from the bottom up and my questions were welcomed.
If you are looking for a brainless monkey to help you with the monkey work that is one thing. If you are looking for someone that can think on there own and take over the monkey work so all you have to do is manage the people and grow your business, that is another. The person who can take over for you is not a monkey see, monkey do type of individual.
 
#86 ·
Mark, Yes grants loans and work study are still alive and well. Ace nails it on the opportunity though. College graduates are leaving school to live with their parents and struggle to pay off any loans with no income. Many of the students I see every day are outright afraid of graduating. they are extending their studies to delay repayment of student loans.
There are ways through all things and for students today there are ways. not preferable by any means. but they are hanging on and college enrollment is actually up by 15% over last year at our University. Another side effect of a bad economy. retention of new students is also up. It's harder to leave when you have nowhere to go.
 
#87 ·
For sure Brian. But the guy who will take over any current commercial operation probably is already able to do the work intelligently w/ understanding and insight and it's just a matter of conforming to the style and direction of thge beekeeper himself.

First I want someone who can work and has a brain, able to see when something is wrong and able to fix it or bring it to my attention.

U gotta know youir employees and their limitations, and then supervise them. Trust but verify. and still mistakes will bve made, but hopefully not fatal ones. Covers get left partially left off, here and there, after feeding syrup. Stuff happens. You gotta be able to roll w/ it.
 
#91 ·
First I want someone who can work and has a brain, able to see when something is wrong and able to fix it or bring it to my attention.
Then you got to grin and bear all the stupid questions that cost you time. Trust me on this one. I volunteered for the internships every year (no one else would do it) I could tell in a heartbeat which students were interested in an engineering carrier or even technical carrier or just there to goof off. An inquiring mind is going to consume your time without question. If you show patience and deal with the stupid questions you will have a believer.
 
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