homeopathic preps for bees

[beesontoast]

It seems to me that there is great potential for the use of homeopathic remedies for honeybees.

Does anyone have any experience of this?

[Mark]

Yes there is some good experience with bees. We were fortunate enough to have a lecture from Enzo Nastati on his work in Edinburgh in 2007. You can get to it here.

He has several preparation for the bee family support and a 45 page booklet called something like "Bee-keeping and evolution of bees: a new vision of the being of the bee, its task and its treatment. With indications for the construction of the hexagonal beehive. " - but in Italian. If you speak Italian and particularly if you are willing to translate it I would be happy to get you a copy. There is a practical sheet on bees that they put out to go with their preparations.

Greg Willis has something not dissimilar if you fancy trawling thearchives of BdNow.

[beesontoast]

Yes there is some good experience with bees. We were fortunate enough to have a lecture from Enzo Nastati on his work in Edinburgh in 2007. You can get to it here.

Good, but do they work? Can he demonstrate actual, real world results in the form of healthy bees that are not reliant on synthetic treatments or doses of oxalic acid? I would love to believe that homeopathic remedies would enable bees to return to a healthy, natural state, but when I read stuff like, "Earth is in its 4th incarnation. Old Saturn, old Sun. Old Moon and now the Earth" I do start to wonder whether he is on the same planet (if you will pardon the pun).

Hexagonal hives - why? Trees aren't hexagonal, that I have seen. Granted, they are not square or trapezoidal either, but bees don't give a damn about shape - they are happy living in a gap between walls, a cylinder or even an old fuel tank (I have seen the pictures).
I don't wish to be offensive, but I am a practical man seeking real-world solutions, not a misty-eyed stargazer. I can't take seriously Nastati if he manipulates numbers to suit his theories:

Q – 15 days – 360 hours – 7 zodiac signs and 10 hours
W – 21 days – 504 hours – 10 zodiac signs and 4 hours
D – 25 days – 600 hours – All 12 zodiac signs

The actual numbers are 16, 21 and 24, or possibly 15, 20 and 23 on small cells.

The rest of his lecture is mysticism and astrology, not beekeeping, IMO.

I am sure that I am showing my ignorance here more than my knowledge, but if anyone can point me towards something more practical, I would be grateful.

[Mark]

Good, but do they work?

Good question. I have only just started using Enzo's preparations with bees so I cannot share personal experiences that they work. However, Enzo is very clear that they do and has been working with bees since 1984. If you go to his web site you can contact him directly. Please report back what they say.

I would love to believe that homeopathic remedies would enable bees to return to a healthy, natural state, but when I read stuff like, "Earth is in its 4th incarnation. Old Saturn, old Sun. Old Moon and now the Earth" I do start to wonder whether he is on the same planet (if you will pardon the pun).

This is a good example of one difficulty with this research. We have no model of the action of homeopathic preparations which is at home in the modern scientific paradigm. 'There's nothing there to do anything so how the hell can it work?' This means we have to find the context and language for a more comprehensive model which encompasses the truths of the current orthodoxy and leaves room for such heretical activities - whilst remaining coherent and accurate. In my opinion, the best language we have is that forged within Anthroposophy. This acts as a deterrent to those who associate astrology with the feeble-minded. It comes parceled up with such gems as the previous incarnations of the planet to frighten off most of the rest. (The notes were those of a lecture Mr Nastati gave to those familiar with the concepts and language of previous incarnations of the Earth.) This is a mixed blessing; it's a pain because many excellent researchers don't get beyond the first meeting with this assuming (not unreasonably) that there can only be mental quicksands. It is good because at least we seem so far beyond the pale that we are not bothered too much.

So why use this language? Mainly because Rudolf Steiner did. Steiner is often bracketed with guru's, and those who read him as 'followers'. This is a good appraisal of some people's relationship - no doubt. But I hold out that one must consider him as a head of department or similar - someone who is currently the best researcher in a discipline which honours both the core features and the very best results of the philosophical and scientific traditions. But Steiner has identified and moved beyond the limits which have encrusted the scientific tradition in its brief history. Whether he has done this well, or thrown out necessary aspects and bolted on inappropriate new parts, is for each to decide.

I have also found aspects, like those you mention, which seem so absurd that I have thrown the books down. But I keep coming back to him. The wonderful experiences with Steiner are when those things that seem dead ends (logical inconsistencies etc) turn out to be avenues to wide new vistas.

Because Steiner's ideas were this apparent amalgam of the bizarre and the practical he would attract both the brilliant and the weird. As it became increasingly clear to some of the former that the strange statements were actually gems when reconsidered in context and without prejudice, his currency occasionally went up even in mainstream circles. There is a story of a time when the people excited by his work arranged a lecture in a mainstream venue and many hundreds of the establishment figures were invited to attend. What did he chose to lecture upon - something exciting and brilliant? No, to the frustration of those who wished to show what a great researcher they had discovered, Steiner lectured on the history of the Earth with Old Saturn etc in long bewildering and sleep-inducing detail! He obviously considered this stuff fundamental even if it is the most unattractive shop-window imaginable.

So hexagonal hives and all the rest emerge out of this. How?

The mainstream academic flow is from materials up. We are brought up to know that the reality of the world is physical and the subjective world is thrown up as 'emergent properties' and 'epiphenomena'. In this understanding life is a special case of matter, and consciousness is a special case of life, and self awareness is special case of awareness etc etc etc. Battling foolishly/bravely, like a salmon going back to the spawning grounds against a stream in spate, goes this work. Matter is seen as a precipitation out of the flow of life, consciousness is seen as a higher reality still. One can ascend from here to higher sovereign levels. This is not some minor adjustment to the status quo. To give this some possibility of not being greater and more dangerous nonsense it would need to be underpinned by a coherent philosophy - particularly of what knowledge is, and with that epistemology would come certainty of how we could possibly know this counter-current reality. So epistemology and history, philology and many more disciplines which currently work with the prevailing current need reappraisal. So much for the ideas (which need to complemented by homework of course).

Then we would need to find some practical outcomes which are - ideally - effective where the established disciplines are not. Since I see myself as an admiring co-researcher rather than a devotee it seems to me that if we think there might be some answers in this strange brew, then we need to check it all out - and that is what Considera is trying to do in the agricultural field.

Can homeopathy be effective? We can just try it and see. Or we do like Mr Nastati has done and alloy 30 years of experimentation with trying to elucidate the necessary language and the mechanism so that the research can be more than a dumb empiricism. We can be content to try it and look for patterns, or try and grasp a world-view which can encompass potentised preparations as real effective levers on the world, and from this understanding move on to creative experimentation. Then we would know if bees do or don't give a damn about shape (- you can see his hexagonal hive in the link above).

Form (and colour) in the organic world is an enigma to the current scientific paradigm. Perhaps it is there to boost one's reproductive index in the struggle to pass on those selfish genes. But form is a primary (subjective?) naive reality and Steiner and Nastati can make sense of this and contend that it is important. One way to see if they are right is to try what Mr Nastati suggests. That's the way I approach it - bolstered for sure by great respect for these people. Then you don't have to believe. You can know if it works or if it doesn't.

I can't take seriously Nastati if he manipulates numbers to suit his theories:

Q – 15 days – 360 hours – 7 zodiac signs and 10 hours
W – 21 days – 504 hours – 10 zodiac signs and 4 hours
D – 25 days – 600 hours – All 12 zodiac signs

The actual numbers are 16, 21 and 24, or possibly 15, 20 and 23 on small cells.

I think he talks about this early on in his lecture. (And those notes are mine so there may be some inaccuracies. He lectures in Italian and things come thick and fast.) It is his contention that the divergence from these figures over time is a response which has accompanied their increased vulnerability to disease. If one can assist them towards their ideal then their health will be encouraged.

None of this says that he is wrong or right - that he may have massaged figures or be a total snake oil salesman is for each to decide.

The rest of his lecture is mysticism and astrology, not beekeeping, IMO.

I hope I have sown at least a seed of doubt. I am willing to water that seed if you would like to continue this discussion.

I am sure that I am showing my ignorance here more than my knowledge, but if anyone can point me towards something more practical, I would be grateful.

Most practical would be to try these things and see if we can overcome CCD and varroa and foul brood etc. I think that these results would be the meeting point of the paradigms.

[beesontoast]

Thank you Mark for your well-reasoned and intelligent response. I need to do some thinking before I can reply in kind, but meanwhile, please be assured that my main interest is not in disputation but in learning, and with that in mind, I am more than willing to continue our conversation.

One note - I am conversant with homeopathic modalities and have used h. medicines for many years, so I need no persuasion as to their efficacy. I don't pretend to understand how they work, but I have seen them work - which is good enough for me! That is the attitude I wish to apply to the work of discovering appropriate protocols for working with bees: observation and experimentation, while recognizing that there are so many variables at work as to render the possibility of finding 'the answer' in a single approach slender in the extreme.

[beesontoast]

I tried to find a mention of the hexagonal hive on Nastati's site, but a search reveals nothing for 'bees' or 'beehive', and even Google cannot provide an example! Ah well, I have seen a picture of one somewhere.

Reading through your post again, it seems to me that you are saying - in the nicest possible way - that in order to understand where Nastati is coming from, I have to understand Steiner. And there's the rub, as I find that I can read pages and pages of Steiner and drift off into a trance... then come back down to Earth and find that I have learned nothing of any practical use - nothing that I can apply to the apparently physical world around me.

One example: in Lecture Two, RS goes on at length about the queen 'emitting light' while still an embryo, and for some time after she has emerged from her cell. What am I to make of that? On any reasonable interpretation, this is palpable nonsense - queens do not glow in the dark, to my knowledge. So if he is talking about something other than 'light' as we know it, to what is he alluding, and to what purpose?

And yet, I agree that something is transmitted from his words - something beyond the mundane - and, I think, something of value at a level I cannot define.

So, I will persist and read the bee lectures again - keeping a crowbar handy with which to keep my mind as open as I can manage. :)

[Mark]

The hexagonal hive is in a picture on the web page mentioned - click the words to the left and then scroll down. There also used to be hexagonal hives I have seen in old bee keeping books. I like the arrangement of the frames - sort of like a Mercedes.

In a way you do have to understand Steiner to understand Nastati because they are using the same terms. You can't easily use any others because the concepts being used are not common or garden. And as you point out below those you think you have got are sometimes used in a tantalizingly different way to the man on the street.

You will not be too surprised, I suspect, that Steiner acts for many people as an unparalleled cure for insomnia. It's bloody hard work and it's also like a large sphere in that the first bite can be elusive. However, also like a sphere, there are many equally valid fundaments. So you can find a point of entry with whatever happens to be your interest - practical, artistic, intellectual - farming, medicine, history, theology, philosophy, philology, pedagogy etc and build up to the rest from there. But having said that, getting enough initial purchase to get something to chew on is a big ask.

The one about the queen emitting light is an example. Clearly you cannot put several in a jar and expect to read your book by the glow - at least I suspect not. So the question is as you have said - what the hell was he on about. Answer - I'm not sure. Logically he could have been wrong, but why offer such a hostage to fortune as this simply disproven assertion? Given that one might not wish to leave it there the question develops as you suggest: "If he is talking about something other than 'light' as we know it, to what is he alluding, and to what purpose?"

Light has several meanings in his writings. He has written early in his more respectable academic career about the struggle between Newton and Goethe in their researches about colour. It's a very interesting historical chapter with neither being wrong in their own terms. But Steiner talks about there being 'light' which we cannot see, but it is more akin to the stuff which bounces off matter to make it perceptible. I will have to request your mental crowbar when you have finished with it to 'get' that into my personal reality but perhaps it is a clue to someone else.

I hold out that the something transmitted in his words will more than likely be worth while in this case as it has in many others for me.

Good luck and thanks for trying.

On another note there are a couple of BD beekeepers who are, at the very least, experienced - Gunther Hauk is one and I think Maria Thun's husband has/used to work a lot with them in relation to the planetary cycles. Perhasp they have answers to these enigmas?

[Mark]

How are your bees this spring? Is the CCD in the UK and how bad is it?

[beesontoast]

Thanks again for your patience, Mark. Interestingly, I pulled the Bee Lectures off the shelf again, and dipped here and there - expecting to find more obscurity - and actually found some interesting and engaging material. Something must be working...

I have Gunter Hauk's book - I discovered it while writing mine - and have not yet managed to make contact with him. Thank you for reminding me to do so. I must also read the Thun's work properly.

My bees are mostly in good shape - I lost one out of six this winter, which is one too many, but not from CCD. That seems to affect commercial pollination operations mostly in the USA, although I hear Denmark is reporting 50% losses among commercial beekeepers. It has to be something to do with the way they medicate, I think, perhaps aggravated by agri-chemicals. I am convinced that it is a syndrome of commercial beekeeping, rather than bees themselves.

[Mark]

I just had this through the email:

The Amazing World of the Honeybee Sunday 13th ˆ Saturday 19th July - EMERSON Collge, East Sussex
with Michael Weiler Costs: Tuition: £ 315 Accommodation: £ 96 All meals: £ 96 (Camping: £ 42 Lunches only: £ 45)

Honeybees have always been essential to human culture. In many eras of civilisation they have been recognised as very important -almost god-like creatures.Today the honeybee is at risk of extinction.Their disappearance would have a disastrous effect on the whole of nature. If we study the manifestations of the life of the bee, their hive and their social organism, we can see that everything is an expression of the principle of warmth.

As a first step the course will investigate the phenomena of the life of honeybees to learn about their biology. From this foundation the next step will be to examine what are the technical requirements and personal qualities necessary to keep and to cultivate bees. Which methods of bee-culture work in harmony with the organism of the beehive? This course is organised by Emerson College Please contact them for further detials and for booking:

Emerson College, Forest Row, East Sussex, RH18 5JX, England · T +44 (0)1342 822 238 · F +44 (0)1342 826 055 · E info@emerson.org.uk

"Michael Weiler
has been a beekeeper for twenty-five years and runs courses and conferences on ecological beekeeping in Germany und the UK. He is the author of Bees & Honey – From Flower to Jar (Floris Books)."

[Linda]

I have been following your discussion about bees. If something develops that can save the commercial bees, I am frequently asked if I am working on that problem! It would be nice to have some suggestions for the bee keepers!
Thanks.

[beesontoast]

I have been following your discussion about bees. If something develops that can save the commercial bees, I am frequently asked if I am working on that problem! It would be nice to have some suggestions for the bee keepers!
Thanks.

See http://www.britishbeekeeping.com/

[Cleo]

Just joined your forum, really to report on our results treating various problems encountered in growing organically in the windy west of Ireland. 3 of us from Mayo Organic Group recently attended a 1-day workshop in Dublin, with Kavi. He advised my friend - whose husband is a beekeeper - that Pulsatilla might be useful for a colony on the brink of collapse. On returning home, she made up the remedy, as a spray as Kavi had suggested, & hubby went to check on the bees & give them a spray. They were already all dead or gone. Three weeks later, my friend decided to take a look at the - she thought - empty hive. Amazed to discover that it now had a colony in residence - especially as she did not know hubby had used the remedy as the previous colony were departed!

So, we don't assume that the dead bees were somehow regenerated but it is obvious that another colony - possibly a swarm looking for a new home - decided that the empty hive looked like a good place to settle. Sort of amazing, as there are so few beekeepers in their area - in fact, only 1 other.

Anyway, pulsatilla seems to work.

I can also attest to the efficacy of Silicea, for late-planted & wind-stressed, bare root hornbeams. We thought we had lost most of a planting of 35. For a small edible woodland, this is quite a loss. Treated with Silicea after the workshop. Within 1 week, 28 had begun to produce new leaves, & a further treatment of Calendula brought back the remaining 7.

I am now convinced.

[Mark]

That's a fascinating story. Do you remember why Kaviraj recommended pulsatilla, ie what the prescribing 'symptoms' are.

Do you mind if I put your hornbeam story onto the materia medica for silicea and calendula?

[isadore]

The recommendation for Pulsatilla comes from Christiane Maute's "Homeopathy for Plants" book. She describes Puls. as being the remedy for bees - as it is for Hive and Herd creatures. She treated insecticide poisoned bees with Puls and with Nux Vomica using an Apple Tree as a vector - she watered the apple tree with the remedies - one after the other - since she knew the bees foraged there. She regards the Varrora mite as the the opportunistic consequence of pesticide poisoning and her success in the one case she mentions would certainly suggest that given the indications of the remedies that she used.

Helios also have a nosode made from Varrora mite and bee pollen which some forums reporting good results:
http://www.biobees.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5545

Here also is a recent article on Homeopathy for Bees which appeared on the Alliance for Registered Homeopaths site:
http://www.a-r-h.org/Publications/Journ ... ohnson.pdf

I'm currently researching this area - the spouse of one of my teachers in the Irish School of Homeopathy keeps bees and they've been treated with Homeopathy for years. I'll be finding out more about the results tomorrow and perhaps get some more valuable indications for remedies to use when working with Bees.

--
Mark O'Sullivan Lic.I.S.H. ISHom - Registered Homeopath
Website: www.homeopath.ie
Facebook: facebook.com/homeopathydublin
Twitter: @homeopath