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Dear colleagues,
Today is an important day for us as it marks the beginning of a campaign that strives to promote and contribute to the development of Professional Beekeeping.
Why Beekeeping from Passion to Profession?
For the vast majority of people that practice beekeeping, at least in Romania, it is no more than a passion or hobby. And this is by all means excellent; it is a rather necessary, but not sufficient condition. In order to be successful as a beekeeper, one must focus his energy and passion into understanding and knowing the honey bee. This is an important step towards success.
We are talking from our own personal experience; we made numerous mistakes since we started our journey nine years ago. Some of these mistakes even made us start over almost from scratch in some areas. Most certainly some of you had to do the same at some point. We analyzed every mistake we ever made and concluded that even though they were different, the root cause was the same: a lack of a clearly defined working system and strategy that were in line with the way of life of the honeybee. There are many opinions and approaches in beekeeping. This is without a doubt beneficial as anyone can choose the one that finds more appropriate. However, for someone that is just beginning his journey as a beekeeper it can be very confusing; not to mention that there are many times where advice is presented as facts, but without being backed by scientific proof.
One of the most influential factors that had a major impact on our approach was a discussion we had with our good friend Patrick Vienne. When asked what was the single most important thing in order to be a successful beekeeper, he said that one must start thinking like a honeybee to be able to work with the honeybees. This is the only way to understand their needs and to support them; so simple, but at the same time very hard to achieve.
As we said in the beginning of this post, Beekeeping from Passion to Profession is our own attempt to contribute to the development of the beekeeping community. How are we planning to do this? By posting a series of articles and videos where we will present a complete and unitary working strategy based on important principles concerning breeding and selection, nutrition, preventing and treating diseases and working techniques. The lack of a strategy like this one, that is based on scientific proof and practical experience represents what is most of the time the missing piece in achieving both spiritual and material satisfactions. By studying and observing the successful people in this domain, you’ll see that each one of them had a clearly defined working strategy. Even if their methods differ to a high degree, the common element is that they all had a coherent working strategy.
Finally, we would like to say that Beekeeping from Passion to Profession is an open campaign, meaning that your opinions and experiences can also contribute to the development of beekeeping. And that’s because we strive to be better than yesterday, and tomorrow to be better than today.
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