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hedgerow pete

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Bees: Nine Lectures on the Nature of Bees [Paperback]
Rudolf Steiner
Rudolf Steiner (Author)
(Author), Thomas Braatz (Translator)


i know of rudolf steiner, the founding father of bio dinamics etc but i had never heard of his bee book, has anyone else and is it any good, more to the point is it worth the £15 plus delivery
 
hedgerow pete said:
has anyone else and is it any good, more to the point is it worth the £15 plus delivery
Click to expand...

If it's the one of lectures given in 1923(?) to the German beekeepers it's excellent as a cautionary tale. £8 on Amazon last time I looked.

Read one of the modern, scientific, behaviour books that post-date pheromone identification - e.g. Mark Winston's Biology of the Honeybee, or anything by Seeley - then read Steiner's book/lectures.

He didn't understand the mechanism underlying his observations, so contorted an explanation to fit his theory to the observations. He was not willing to change his theory, merely the explanation that made it fit.

For instance:

Steiner: queen is fertile only because she develops within less than one solar rotation, hence contains the life-giving energy of the sun.

Conventional: queen is fertile because she has fully-developed ovaries and reproductive organs which are absent in the sterile workers.

I can demonstrate the latter to my own satisfaction using a cheap microscope. I don't know quite how to measure for life giving solar energies... which to believe? :)
 
Here it is verbatim, for those who think I've got a downer on Steiner, from Lecture 2 of the above link:

Steiner said:
How is it with the Queen? The Queen-bee does not even go through the whole of the Sun-revolution, but stays behind and remains always a creature of the Sun. For this reason the Queen is much nearer to her larval state than the others; the drones (the males) are the farthest removed from the larval state. The Queen is thereby able to lay eggs. In the bees it is clearly to be seen what it signifies to be exposed to the earth-influence or to the Sun-influence. As you know, it depends entirely on whether the bee completes, or does not complete its Sun-development, that it becomes either a Queen, a worker or a drone. The Queen lays eggs, and it is because she remains always under the influence of the Sun and receives nothing from the earth that she is enabled to do so. The worker-bee goes a little further and develops for another four or five days; it tastes the Sun to the full. But then, just when its body becomes firm enough it goes over, just for a moment, as I said, into the earth-development. Thus the worker-bee cannot return again to the Sun, for it has already thoroughly absorbed its influences. Consequently the worker-bee cannot lay eggs.
Click to expand...
 
Steiner's work is worth a read - very often he seems to stumble upon sensible ideas, well ahead of his time (and often eerily prophetic), but as has been suggested, he puts all sorts of odd theories as to "why" things occur as well. In the context of when they were written (over 80 years ago), they contain nuggets of pure gold, worth reading with an open mind.
I first came across Steiner's work over 40 years ago - the local Steiner school was much admired (particularly for their success with handicapped children), and people were very keen to have their kids attend.
Demeter certified foods are undoubtedly excellent organic products, grown in a way that is sustainable, and respecting of the environment - I really can't knock them for either of those achievements - I'm quite happy to put up with some of his wilder flights of fancy (and some of them are really wild!) if the results "on the ground" are as good as they are.
(Big Ag can't emulate their achievements, despite all their false claims of "scientific rationality")
 
Don't view his writings on beekeeping in the reflected glory of other achievements. Read them for what they are - perverse and contorted and they do not stand up to modern scrutiny. Makes me think of medicinal blood-letting and "a course of leeches" as the cure for all ailments.

Historical curiosity, not a guide to beekeeping :)
 
any book on any subject is normaly out of date or out of line to modern thinking in twenty years, the reason i asked was that it was brought to my attention on a steiner point on some thing else.

the idea was that i look at least read it to make my own mind up. which i have and yes its out of line to modern thinking but still a good read, thanks for the replies
 
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