Bee a trainer

In my travel I look for the 'Trainee' badges on the work shirts worn by people with sometimes awkwardly smiling faces—the probationary wait staff at restaurants. It is not so much that I change my behavior when I get a less experienced person assigned to help me, but I try really hard not to do anything that would add to their stress level, working as a newbee employee.

Less often I spot the "Trainer" badge on the staff person who is distantly hovering to make sure that nothing goes wrong, and to answer questions. Any new job requires that we learn hundreds, no, thousands of bits of information—from food servers to bank tellers to keeping a hive of bees. There is a special skill set needed to be a good Trainer. You need to be patient, you should listen carefully so you understand the Trainee's question or issue, and you absolutely need to know what you are talking about, at least at the level you are expected to train.

I am not an instinctive trainer, but had to learn—in some ways the hard way. Both of my parents were active volunteers, mainly in 4-H programs in Kalamazoo County but also for the entire state of Michigan. I know that together they gave over 100 years of their time to the young people in the community, and now that I am back in the area, I continually meet people who are eager to tell me that Mom taught them how to put in a vegetable garden and can tomatoes, or Dad helped them learn about woodworking. They were great instructors for insect study, with Mom as good at insect identification as I was, and Dad in charge of making wooden display boxes to enter into the county and state fairs. Together, they helped many young people earn blue ribbons.

About a decade ago my life was in pretty drastic evolution (newly divorced, asking who am I and what do I want to do when I grow up?) so I tried to start a new career path, and ended up as a coordinator at a local hospital. It was the best paying job I have ever had but I got fired, walked to the door. I was hired to be a trainer, but was still a trainee myself because my unskillfullness in handling one employee’s noseyness lead to a justifiable termination. I was not my best in front of the people I was hired to coordinate, and they did not need to be exposed to any more skills that caused hospital management further headaches. They were good at that when I was hired, in fact, that is why I was hired. Oh, well.

My evolution continued. Unemployed, I sold off my bee book collection (about 48 linear feet of great books) and wrote. I wrote about a lot of different things, and even have a novel out there that nobody buys. Gradually I got reconnected with the beekeeping I had always done and focused on writing two monthly articles as well as three bee books. That’s my new life plan: write and travel, as well as fix and eat some great food and drink with friends. I did a lot of acting and directing at the community theater level, painted, went on spiritual retreats and cleared some long-term cobwebs from my brain. In many was it was good that I got fired that day.

Mark Nepo

I’ve just started a five-month class with Mark Nepo (www.marknepo.com), a poet and spiritual leader. I discovered his The Book of Awakening (2000) when I was in New Haven the day after the last SNEBA (Southern New England Beekeepers Assembly). The book was for sale on the church bookstand. I read that he had been a teacher in Albany, NY near where my son went to college, and where SABA meets every year. But the final dot was connected when I saw that he now works for Fetzer Institute (www.fetzer.org), a Kalamazoo based foundation that puts on programs about love, compassion and forgiveness, using such people as Desmond Tutu and the The Delai Lama as speakers. The class I am taking is not part of the Fetzer program—my fellow classmates are not the rich and famous (well, maybe they are, and I just don’t know it), but ordinary people who know some of the same beekeepers I know and have instructed.

The first weekend was filled with a lot of reading, sharing and personal journaling, something I was doing more regularly a decade ago. Maybe blogging is the new journaling—it does not feel the same typing on the laptop rather than scratching in a bend and weather-worn notebook.

Nepo’s one reading was a repeat of the “you know you are getting old” email forward most of us have received. It is the one where “you know you are old when your back goes out more than you do”. The lesson at hand was the reference to “you know you are old when you get to the top of the ladder and you realize that you put the ladder on the wrong wall”.

Is your ladder against the wrong wall?

If, like me, you have been putting your ladder against the wrong wall—something you do not have to be old to do but often older to recognize—then this may resonate with you as it does with me. When I put my ladder against the hospital coordinator wall I had clearly picked the wrong wall. This was a great paycheck, but a stressful and unhappy place for me to work. Of course, it took my abrupt termination for me to realize how unhappy I was, and how wrong that ladder was for me to climb.

Nepo’s reading explored the fact that many people, men traditionally, fail to realize that they have put their ladder against the wrong wall until they are ready to retire. I think that is why some people, like me, announce that they will never retire. Others look at the ladder they climbed over the decades and getting nothing back from it. Too many people look at the wall and don’t look for another one by dying. This is such a waste.

Compared to a decade ago, there are more beekeepers now, and many seem to better prepared to deal with the issues of green beekeeping, supporting local food movements, urban beekeeping, and providing more education for the general public and the beekeepers in the community. When I compare my Mother’s involvement in training youth with the lack of involvement with family, neighbors, and friends, I realize that she had a special ability to push herself into a teaching/mentoring position even when in her 90s. These ‘coaching’ positions kept her going. She had lists of things to do every day of her adult life, and that included people to call to ask to help with her vision of what needed to be done. I was on that list often. This has encouraged me to make up my own list, and use it as a blueprint for teaching others about bees, or whatever I happen to be doing in the future.

1. Build Teams—How many organizations are run by a strong leader who refuses to ask for help? Often these same people complain that nobody will help with local meetings. We all need to learn to include others, even if we do not think that a person will do as good a job as we will (and that is a pretty common view that our Ego’s provide). Make that list of jobs that your organization needs to have done, getting input from the rest of the club. Include everything from finance to cleaning up after the meeting. If you are using an outside speaker develop a plan to host, support and compensate the invited person.

2. Ask the single person counting the spots on the ceiling! —If you are in a meeting and you find someone all alone and counting the number of holes in the ceiling tile, go over and ask them to help. At the registration table, with the newsletter, with the coffee, with folding chairs at the end of the meeting. You will be in the best position to see how that person responds (there are very few people who really want to be ceiling spot counters), but most do not. “Could you help me for a minute?” is one of the questions most folks are ready to say yes to. Just ask.

3. Bee Social—Ask to be a host/hostess for a speaker by inviting some of the club members to join the speaker for dinner before or after the program. Many clubs need to cut expense, and if you are able, offer to host the speaker in your home. Some will decline for a variety of reasons (John Kefuss offered to put me up in his hay loft and I flatly refused). Some of my favorite bee clubs like the BYBA in Connecticut and the CCHBA in northern Texas host the speaker at a local restaurant. It can be a bit awkward to ask someone for dinner at 4:30 pm but allow time to eat, have a conversation, drive to the meeting and get everything setup by 7 pm.

4. Master and share technology—My former life as an extension specialist included the policy that all slide projectors be set up and focused BEFORE the speaker starts to speak. It really annoys me to go to a meeting and see someone fumble with the laptop computer, projector and remote as people sit and wait. Volunteer to set up all the equipment before the speaker starts, and hand the the speaker the remote with a clear set of instructions of what to push (and what not to push).

5. Offer to run the light switch—Okay, this is extreme. But how many times have you been at a meeting where they send for the hotel or facility employee to find out how to dim the lights? Offer to do this in advance and be ready to work with the speaker(s). In this and the example above, for every minute you save for the speaker, you provide a gift to your follow attendees so they have more time to hear what the speaker has to share.

6. Bee A Trainer—Even if you are a new beekeeper you can share what you know, however limited. If you have put together a few boxes of bee equipment and frames, you probably can show someone else how to do it.

7. Bee A Teacher—In spite of the bad things people say about teachers, not everyone can teach. If you have BOTH the knowledge and the ability to share that knowledge, you should be teaching. A friend of mine is very knowledgable about bees, but he fails routinely as a teacher. In fact, he has scared folks away from bees and beekeeping because he is such a poor teacher. I have suggested he mentor a few folks who use his ideas and let them teach. Making up a powerpoint presentation is just the start. Can anyone read those slides? Does the program make any sense?

8. Bee A Mentor—Mentors are teachers too, but often in a one-on-one or small group situation. I like to think this is how I do field sessons with bees, since I ask each beekeeper to work the hive, open the colony, smoke the bees, remove the frames. I already know how to do this, and I will Model the way I do it if I find the new beekeeper struggling. But then the hive tool goes back into the hands of the newbee. Only with patient and clear instruction will folks relax a bit and enjoy the process of opening the hive. Mentors are needed by all new beekeepers to share local conditions. When do the dandelions bloom? What is in bloom right now? Several bee clubs have mentor sessions an hour or so before the main program. Like the attendants around the queen bee, a small huddle of beekeeper trainees form around each mentor to obtain local knowledge.

9. Bee A Coach—Coaches are people to provide encouragement and training. Beekeepers who watch their colonies die during a late winter cold snap will need to be pumped up to get more bees just like a swimmer needs encouragement to make a difficult dive. It is both cheerleading, psychological softening and inspirational motivation that is necessary to keep beekeepers keeping bees. When you look at all the problems bee colonies and the bee industry face you really can appreciate the need and role of good coaches. We lack this in our industry, don’t we? If you have someone who encourages you to stay in beekeeping, who cheers your successes and works you through your unskillfullness or bad luck, you are one of the lucky ones.

10. Bee A Friend—Do you have a beekeeping friend? Do you have any friend? My Mother always said that the most difficult part of being in her 90s was watching her friends and then her friend’s children die. You know you are getting old when you start reading the obits in the newspaper to see if you are sill alive. Jeff and I grew up together being the same age and neighbors. We were not there every day of our lives, but he would call me on my trips and say “What can you see right now?” He was not an easy person to understand, but he was often there for me, first in line. When he died in 2007 to a combination of cancer and heart problems from alcohol and tobacco abuse I knew that I would miss him. Everyday. How many times have I picked up the phone to call him? I have spots over all the country that I revisit and think about my describing the countryside to him.

So now I work on making new friends. Some are beekeepers but many are not. I know that some will move on and be reduced to annual emails in December. I have placed my ladder on the wall of friendships. I value the fact that I am still a friend with my ex-wife; that my kids and brothers are often friends, but not always. I have made many friends in community theater and bee clubs as I work with them. But it is the inner circle of very few close friends that takes the work, paying the great dividends.

January Birthday Party

For years Mom had the neighbors on HJ Ave get together for a birthday party — there are plenty of folks on the street that shared January for a birthday and that gave her an excuse to celebrate her own birthday at the middle of the month. Yesterday brother Jim (the Idaho brother) hosted such a party at the farm and most of the birthday hats were there, except of course Mom. She died two years ago, to the day.

Two years can be a long time or a blip on the time radar. Mom always measured the events she attended by one trust-worthy standard. The food.

"Mom, how was the meeting?"

"Not so good, the meal was terrible. I brought it home if you want it—it is in the refrigerator"

or

"Did you have a good time?"

"Oh yes, it was a potluck, and everything tasted so wonderful."

She might have been given leftovers, but might have been keeping them for herself. She loved potluck leftovers for breakfast.

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Most of us like potlucks. Yesterday's party had a full range of surprises. Brother Jim baked Sole as a change from the usual chicken/beef/pork/ham options. It was overwhelmed by the home-made chicken pot pies neighbor Cathy made, or the wonderful salads of many kinds, potatoes and ham, and some dips and other treats I ate but did not really know what was in it. Grapes and pears from the farm appeared as home-made wine.

The plates came back clean. Most of the food was eaten. I made a huge dish of Curried Rice and had leftovers. I made it because Jim was worried about lacking a starch for the meal. We should have known better. I toned down the curry and added more butter. A quarter pound of butter seems necessary for three cups of uncooked rice, right?

The party started at 2 pm and folks were there for several hours. Some were in the TV room, others in the living (holy) room, and others in the basement where the wood stove was going. At least five pre-teen girls were in and out of the house sledding on the hill, and later playing hide an seek in the house. It has been a long time since anyone played hide and seek in that house, and it needed to have small bodies crawling into tiny spaces to feel alive again.

Bee talk with Cathy King and Craig and Sandy Fuller took place. The bee tree they removed and I showed in photos in one of the magazines, is dead. The lesson is that November bee removals are not healthy for bees. It is a bit late in the season. The neighbors all like the bee students on the farm. I enjoyed the conversations with all the neighbors, and see the role that Mom filled in keeping the neighborhood in communication with each other.

The neighbors called Mom the Queen or HJ Ave. She worked for that honor and enjoyed the role. They respected this 93 year-old woman and considered her as a role model.

Mom would have liked the afternoon. The food was very good.