Everyone should have an interest in beekeeping since our very lives depend on it. ~ Rudolf Steiner
Bees are essential to our food supply, pollinating 40 – 70% of our diet including apples, peaches, strawberries, nuts, avocados, broccoli as well as many important medicinal plants. In a series of lectures given in 1923 Rudolf Steiner predicted the dire state of today’s honeybee. He stated that within 50 to 80 years we would see the consequences of practices such as breeding queen bees artificially and mechanizing the naturally organic forces of the beehive.
Last summer Time magazine published an article to highlight The Plight of the Honeybee
and Wholefoods in Garden City, RI removed all of its pollination dependent produce illustrating This is what your supermarket looks like without bees. Since then the USDA Agricultural Research Service which has been monitoring Colony Collapse Disorder since 2006, is reporting that “Despite a number of claims in the general and scientific media, a cause or causes of CCD have not been identified by researchers.”

Gunther Hauk has long been a beekeeper and advocate. In his book Toward Saving the Honeybee he finds that over the last 150 years beekeeping has fallen prey to the same misguided approaches as conventional agriculture. Featured in the internationally acclaimed documentary, Queen of the Sun Hauk examines how respect for the wisdom inherent in the natural laws of life, such as diversity and limits of growth have given way to the laws of industry that demand millions of acres of mono-cultures to meet the needs of large, powerful corporations.
In his article, The Honeybee Crisis: A Curse or a Blessing? Hauk recoginzes the current bee crisis as a call to action. He began the nonprofit Spikenard Farm as a honeybee sanctuary in 2006 and he is committed to ensuring that the knowledge and practice of sustainable, biodynamic beekeeping continues to grow. In his lectures Steiner spoke of the unconscious wisdom contained in the beehive and how this relates to the human experiences of health, civilization, and the cosmos. (His collected lectures are available in the volume Bees from SteinerBooks with an introduction written by Hauk.) The riddles of how bees democratically achieve consensus or understand the highly complicated dances that guide them to nectar and pollen supply are just part of what Goethe called nature’s open mystery.

Join us at Meadowbrook to learn more about conscious, sustainable beekeeping with Gunther Hauk in October on Friday 3rd & Saturday 4th. For more information and to reserve your place contact AdultEd@meadowbrookschool.com