Bee Time Lessons from the Hive

Introduction Mark L. Winston What is bee time?

There are powerful lessons to be learned from bees about how we humans can better understand our place in nature, engage the people and events surrounding us with greater focus and clarity, interact more effectively in our relationships and communities, and open ourselves to a deeper understanding of who we are as individuals, communities and a species. I’ll talk about my experiences over 30 years of walking into apiaries, and the lessons learned from a life spent among the bees.                                                                                        -Mark Winston

Chapter Overviews Chapter 1: Beginning with Bees Chapter 2: Honey Chapter 3: Killer Bees Chapter 4: A Thousand Little Cuts

Chapter Overviews Chapter 5: Valuing Nature Chapter 6: Bees in the City Chapter 7: There's Something Bigger than Phil Chapter 8: Art and Culture

Chapter Overviews Chapter 9: Being Social Chapter 10: Conversing Chapter 11: Lessons from the Hive

Turning the Americas into familiar farms and gardens was the early settlers’ form of hubris, but the introduction of African bees in the 1950s reflected an era driven by a different hubris, the belief that science and technology could solve all problems. (pg. 47)

In 2002, Lora Morandin found that leaving 1/3 of a farm unmanaged could increase profits nearly three-fold (pg. 85-86). The father-son farming duo of the Scofields now have 800 hives dedicated to just pollinating with areas dedicated to bee-friendly plants, which Winston describes as the richest wildlands in the area (pg. 90-91).   Still, farmers are not really trying to help the situation with the bees, banking on the possibility of genetically-modified plants and the continued use of rented honeybees. Why do you think this is?

Bees can help us not only bridge the natural-to-managed divide but also straddle another deep division in North American society, rich versus poor (pg. 131). Between rooftop apiaries and programs that provide jobs for the poor in urban areas, bees show that they are beneficial in urban settings. Have you ever thought of bees as having the ability to benefit all levels of humanity outside of strictly food? Do you think if more programs were created like Hives for Humanity, more people would be standing up for the bees?

Every behavior of bees can be explained as a simple response to their environment and each other, yet when put together into a complex colony we imagine a deeper meaning than any of the behaviors might inspire alone (pg. 152-153). This chapter is all about how there is a sort of mysticism associated with bees. Have you ever thought of how bees can be a sort of bridge between science and the mystical. To what degree do you associate the mystic-ness of bees to their hive mentality? How do you think that this quote can be applied to humans?

"We – and bees – benefit from performing tasks serially rather than multitasking, and we both take advantage of crowdsourcing concepts in evaluating information and reaching wise decisions." p.195 'Bees use decentralized decision making by gathering solutions from numerous individuals when higher level resolutions are needed'.

"When we participate in the human equivalent of a colony conversation, dialogue, we experience something uncannily similar to the bees: the miracle of meshing with many others through the passive alertness of an engaged mind" p.220 The internet has become a hive for humans to communicate, sharing stories, news, and discoveries. However, our interactions have become less personal. Is this a good thing or a bad thing?

How much of our human society can really be related to an insect? "That's why bee time is so compelling: As we come to know bees, we see an echo of ourselves" p.238 How much of our human society can really be related to an insect?

Takeaways