smallbee
New Bee
- Joined
- Jun 20, 2024
- Messages
- 21
- Reaction score
- 25
- Location
- Ireland
- Hive Type
- National
- Number of Hives
- 3
Ok, so now that I have nothing much to actually do to the bees for now, my mind turns to the human factors/cognitive science aspects of beekeeping, as human factors is one of the many things I do badly and I am currently procrastinating from writing a dissertation about expertise (in a very different domain).
I think most people seem to agree that beekeeping is tricky. It's pretty much universally agreed that anyone wanting bees should do a course, probably read some books, either have a mentor or be part of an association where you can get advice. And there are many internet forums and blogs about the many technical aspects of it.
The Apiarist writes a bit about it here: https://theapiarist.org/shallow-learning-curves/
Main points:
* hard to do inspections with all the bees in the way
* a lot of things to be on the lookout for
* lots of seasonal and local variation
I think it is difficult. Points that The Apiarist doesn't touch on include the fact that feedback cycles are long.
Fail to treat your colony for varroa? Might last a couple of years before it succumbs.
Ignore swarming? If queen mating conditions are good, maybe you don't even notice, if you're not observant.
Long feedback cycles make learning hard because it becomes harder to connect cause to effect. And not noticing the signs of whatever the cause was makes it even less likely that learning happens.
Even worse, bee colonies are complex dynamic systems - lots of variables, all changing all the time and affecting each other in ways that can lead to nonlinear effects. Humans are bad about reasoning about this kind of system. The classic 'why did my bees abscond' tipping point where declining bee numbers collide with peak mite numbers and result in rapid collapse is probably the best example of this. One thing I do know about managing dynamic systems is that unless they are inherently stable with robust feedback systems (and bee colonies are not inherently stable if you consider swarming instability, plus there is varroa), then at some point things are likely to spin out of control if you don't have a fairly accurate model of how they are working and what you need to do to manage them.
A lot of people talk about 'reading a hive'. There's a lot of research into expertise in general and how experts in any given domain are different to novices.
One big way that experts are different is that they can make sense of a lot of noisy information and extract what Dietrich Dorner calls 'supersignals'.
Experienced practitioners in all fields quite literally see the world differently to novices. So where a novice looks at a frame and just sees a jumble of stuff and is struggling to pick out what is honey and what is beebread and what is brood, the expert parses all of that effortlessly and sees all sorts of things - some subtle, like cleaned empty cells or pinprick holes in cappings - that contribute to their understanding of the state of the colony, and, importantly, what it's likely to be doing in the next couple of weeks. The expert doesn't have to pore over the frame and think hard about it, they literally just 'see' that the queen is likely to lay on it soon, or that there is a varroa issue brewing.
There's also an idea that experts navigate situations using what are called 'data frames', which are basically stories or maps of a given situation. Those frames guide how we seek out knowledge. So an experienced beekeeper knowing that it is spring will be thinking of swarming and looking for signs that it's time to add more space or do some other manipulation. Or in the autumn you're looking for evidence about varroa levels, effectiveness of treatments, and winter stores. If you know a hive has a very old queen maybe you're also looking for signs of supersedure. Experts have a rich library of frames. Novices don't, so we're just using Hooper's questions and hoping for the best
Of course, sometimes our frames are not complete, and the ability to notice anomalies, things that are not as expected in that frame, is also a hallmark of expertise. The beekeeper who notices greasy trembling bees on the top bars, or that a hive isn't building up as expected in the spring, or that their clipped queen has two full pairs of wings now, or that there is comb with jagged edges indicating robbing, is doing that.
And all this is before we even get into the hardest parts of beekeeping, which are, of course, keeping the smoker lit and finding the queen
But in all seriousness, as well as the cognitive science stuff, there is the practical side, and part of that is knowing what 'levers' you can pull in order to achieve various goals, and which kinds of interventions work best in which conditions and times of the year.... there is a lot there too. And I'm still only scraping the surface of it.
The one thing that beekeepers do have in our favour is that - local factors and genetics aside - there is a fair amount of commonality between bee colonies. Colony A and Colony B sitting beside each other in similar states and with similar history have a fair chance of behaving similarly. So we can learn, and apply our knowledge year to year, colony to colony. Hence, beekeeping by the calendar works to an extent. Of course novel diseases and pests do shake things up, as do things like treatments becoming ineffective, changing climates. No free lunch.
I think most people seem to agree that beekeeping is tricky. It's pretty much universally agreed that anyone wanting bees should do a course, probably read some books, either have a mentor or be part of an association where you can get advice. And there are many internet forums and blogs about the many technical aspects of it.
The Apiarist writes a bit about it here: https://theapiarist.org/shallow-learning-curves/
Main points:
* hard to do inspections with all the bees in the way
* a lot of things to be on the lookout for
* lots of seasonal and local variation
I think it is difficult. Points that The Apiarist doesn't touch on include the fact that feedback cycles are long.
Fail to treat your colony for varroa? Might last a couple of years before it succumbs.
Ignore swarming? If queen mating conditions are good, maybe you don't even notice, if you're not observant.
Long feedback cycles make learning hard because it becomes harder to connect cause to effect. And not noticing the signs of whatever the cause was makes it even less likely that learning happens.
Even worse, bee colonies are complex dynamic systems - lots of variables, all changing all the time and affecting each other in ways that can lead to nonlinear effects. Humans are bad about reasoning about this kind of system. The classic 'why did my bees abscond' tipping point where declining bee numbers collide with peak mite numbers and result in rapid collapse is probably the best example of this. One thing I do know about managing dynamic systems is that unless they are inherently stable with robust feedback systems (and bee colonies are not inherently stable if you consider swarming instability, plus there is varroa), then at some point things are likely to spin out of control if you don't have a fairly accurate model of how they are working and what you need to do to manage them.
A lot of people talk about 'reading a hive'. There's a lot of research into expertise in general and how experts in any given domain are different to novices.
One big way that experts are different is that they can make sense of a lot of noisy information and extract what Dietrich Dorner calls 'supersignals'.
Experienced practitioners in all fields quite literally see the world differently to novices. So where a novice looks at a frame and just sees a jumble of stuff and is struggling to pick out what is honey and what is beebread and what is brood, the expert parses all of that effortlessly and sees all sorts of things - some subtle, like cleaned empty cells or pinprick holes in cappings - that contribute to their understanding of the state of the colony, and, importantly, what it's likely to be doing in the next couple of weeks. The expert doesn't have to pore over the frame and think hard about it, they literally just 'see' that the queen is likely to lay on it soon, or that there is a varroa issue brewing.
There's also an idea that experts navigate situations using what are called 'data frames', which are basically stories or maps of a given situation. Those frames guide how we seek out knowledge. So an experienced beekeeper knowing that it is spring will be thinking of swarming and looking for signs that it's time to add more space or do some other manipulation. Or in the autumn you're looking for evidence about varroa levels, effectiveness of treatments, and winter stores. If you know a hive has a very old queen maybe you're also looking for signs of supersedure. Experts have a rich library of frames. Novices don't, so we're just using Hooper's questions and hoping for the best
Of course, sometimes our frames are not complete, and the ability to notice anomalies, things that are not as expected in that frame, is also a hallmark of expertise. The beekeeper who notices greasy trembling bees on the top bars, or that a hive isn't building up as expected in the spring, or that their clipped queen has two full pairs of wings now, or that there is comb with jagged edges indicating robbing, is doing that.
And all this is before we even get into the hardest parts of beekeeping, which are, of course, keeping the smoker lit and finding the queen
But in all seriousness, as well as the cognitive science stuff, there is the practical side, and part of that is knowing what 'levers' you can pull in order to achieve various goals, and which kinds of interventions work best in which conditions and times of the year.... there is a lot there too. And I'm still only scraping the surface of it.
The one thing that beekeepers do have in our favour is that - local factors and genetics aside - there is a fair amount of commonality between bee colonies. Colony A and Colony B sitting beside each other in similar states and with similar history have a fair chance of behaving similarly. So we can learn, and apply our knowledge year to year, colony to colony. Hence, beekeeping by the calendar works to an extent. Of course novel diseases and pests do shake things up, as do things like treatments becoming ineffective, changing climates. No free lunch.
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