Rudolf Steiner: The Bee Lectures of 1923 and Biodynamic Predictions of Colony Collapse Disorder

Family ties anticipate the unsnobbishness in Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner's (born February 27, 1861) personal and professional lives. Little Rudolf's birth bespeaks the courageous strength of his industrious, unassuming parents' mutual love. His father, Johann Baptiste Steiner (June 23, 1829 – 1910), in fact braved the opposition of influential employers within the Spanish-Austro-Hungarian House of Hoyos to his engagement in 1858 to one of the noble family's seamstresses, Franziska Blie (May 8, 1834 – 1918). Johann left his position as forest ranger on the imperial count's Lower Austrian estate at Geras. As of May 1859, he operated the Southern Austrian Railway station's telegraph at what was then Prestanek, Slovene Lands, Austria-Hungary, in what is now Pivka, Slovenia.

Franziska and Johann married on May 8, 1860 in nearby Slavina. They moved into house #24 when Johann transferred to what was then Mirakirály, Austria-Hungary at what is now Donji Kraljevec, Croatia. But station master Laurentius Diem needed Johann in 3-day 24-7 stretches. He sanctioned Franziska's occupying the station's bedroom to deliver Rudolf on Wednesday, February 27, 1861, at 23.15 hours (11:15 p.m.). He and wife Josefa Jakl served as godparents when severing Rudolf's umbilical cord provoked massive bleeding. Rudolf was the recipient of two baptisms:

• The emergency announcement “I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit” by his birth witnesses;

• The parish ceremony at Draskovec by Father Gabriel Mestritz.

Unassuming family ties likewise augur Rudolf's intellectual and professional achievements. He drew upon diligence and unpretentiousness from both parents. Franziska and Johann emphasized considerate behavior, educational achievement, and professional advancement. Johann had his family relocated back to Lower Austria through successive promotions to station master at:

• Pottschach;

• Neudörfl;

• Wiener Neustadt;

• Inzersdorf.

The postings and re-postings reflected Johann's savvy home-schooling supplements to Rudolf's attendance at:

• Local schools;

• Secondary school;

• Technology Institute of Vienna;

• University of Rostock.

They ultimately resulted in:

• Eligibility for academic scholarships;

• Receipt of whiz-kid recognition in biology, botany, chemistry, mathematics, literature, and philosophy;

• Submission of a doctoral dissertation tackling Johann Gottlieb Fichte's (May 19, 1762 – January 27, 1814) perception of the ego.

Dr. Steiner achieved intellectual super-stardom as:

• Editor of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's (August 28, 1749 – March 22, 1832) science-related works, 1882 - 1896;

• Investigator of Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche's (October 15, 1844 – August 25, 1900) finite recurrences within infinity;

• Leader of the German branch to Annie Besant's (October 1, 1847 – September 20, 1933) Theosophical Society, 1902 - 1912;

• Organizer of the Anthroposophical Society, 1913-.

Throughout his meteoric professional career, Dr. Steiner never forgot his village origins. He never lost the ability to interact with educated and uneducated audiences in rural and urban settings. He managed to harmonize elite and ordinary in human (anthropos-) wisdom (-sophia) and spirituality-based systems of:

• Agriculture;

• Art;

• Education;

• Science.

Lectures in Dornach, Switzerland on February 3, November 26 and 28, December 1, 5, 10, 12, 15, and 22, 1923 attest to Dr. Steiner's everyday concerns. They consider the functioning of bees and the future of beehives.

• Lecture 1 describes the life cycles of drones, queens, and workers.
• Lecture 2 discusses the chemical reactions midway between smell and taste in regard to bee interactions with floral nectars and pollens.
• Lecture 3 emphasizes the role of local nectars in the production of beeswax and hexagonal, silicic acid-imbued cells.
• Lecture 4 finds disquieting possibilities -- of bee deaths in about 50 years and of bee extinctions in around 100 years -- from artificial breeding, feeding, and relocating of bees.

Lecture 5 associates bee diseases with:

• Aeration-unfriendly wooden boxes;
• Chemically fertilized flowers;
• Imbalanced blood and gastric juices;
• Non-native clover and crocus plantings.

Lecture 6 compares:

• Bee venom-provoked medical emergencies with medicinal treatments of gout and rheumatism;
• More exclusive floral nectar requirements of bees with the willingness of ants and wasps to digest aphid honeydew.

Lecture 7 expresses the interconnected well-being of cultivated and wild nature with people, Planet Earth, and the universe. Lecture 8 mulls:

• Ancient and twenty-first century Earth without bees;
• Critical interactions between bees and their traditional host plants;
• Declining nutrition from mass-growing crops and mass-raising animals through chemical, non-native, and out-sourced inputs;
• Misunderstood and undiscovered interconnections beyond, on, and within Earth and the universe.

Through the economic law of supply and demand, increasing food production theoretically aims to maximize consumers and profits and to minimize costs and prices. Scientific advances and technological breakthroughs theoretically assure improved quality with increased quantity. But profound, super-fast changes often battle with tradition. Straddling nature-based and science-devoted worlds, Dr. Steiner nevertheless did not assume that current and future action plans are necessarily better than past or vice versa. Such clear-sighted open-mindedness explains why Dr. Steiner predicted the chemical/genetic causes and population/product effects of -- and the native, site-specific resource solutions to -- bee colony collapse disorders in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. That is why his General Anthroposophical Society still occupies his Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland.

Allgemeine Anthroposophische Gesellschaft

Rüttiweg 45
CH-4143 Dornach 1

Switzerland

Email: [email protected]

Fax: 41 61 706 43 14

Phone: 41 61 706 42 42

Website: http://www.goetheanum.org

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Pivka Railway Station: Rudolf Steiner's father, Johann, began position as station's telegraph operator, as of May 1859, prior to marriage to Franziska Blie on May 8, 1860; their previous employers, House of Hoyos, forbad employees to wed.
Station at Pivka (then known as Prestanek) was activated on July 28, 1857, with opening of Austrian Southern Railway's tracks from Ljubljana (central Slovenia) to Trieste, northeastern Italy. Tracks completed the railway's critical Vienna - Trieste line.
Karst Plateau, traditional Inner Carniola region, southwestern Slovenia: Nils Öberg (Klockarnils), CC BY SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pivka_station.JPG

Rudolf Steiner's childhood home
Donji Kraljevec (formerly Murakirály), Međimurje County, northern Croatia: Croq, CC BY SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rudolf_Steiner_Geburtshaus,Donji_Kraljevec,_Croatia.JPG

Rudolf Steiner's homeschooling with parents supplemented traditional education in Realschule (secondary school) in Wiener Neustadt.
After Rudolf's graduation in 1879, his supportive father transferred to Inzersdorf to facilitate Rudolf's enrollment in Vienna University of Technology (Technische Universität Wien).
Realschule (1873) opened Nov. 15, 1874, at Herzog-Leopold-Straße 32, Wiener Neustadt, Lower Austria, northeastern Austria: CC BY SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Realschule_Wiener_Neustadt.jpg

Johann Gottlieb Fichte: German philosopher's writings on perception of the ego served as subject of Rudolf Steiner's doctoral dissertation.
portrait ca. 1807 -1808, at time of Fichte's delivery of 14 "Addresses to the German Nation" in hall of Academy of Sciences, Berlin, winter 1807 - 1808
J.G. Fichte, Addresses to the German Nation (1922), translated by R.F. Jones and G.H. Turnbull; frontispiece: Not in copyright, via Internet Archive @ https://archive.org/details/addressestothege00fichuoft/page/n9/mode/1up

aerial view of campus of Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophical Society, founded in 1913
The First Goetheanum (two-domed structure, upper right) was site of Rudolf Steiner's lectures about bees in 1923; on New Year's Eve, nine days after Rudolf's last lecture of December 22, Goetheanum was destroyed by arson fire.
First Goetheanum, Dornach, Solothurn canton, northwestern Switzerland: Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Goetheanum-kert.jpg

In Lecture II, Rudolf Steiner discussed hexagonal shape of each "vessel" that join together to form honeycomb.
Western honey bee (Apis mellifera) honeycomb's eggs and larvae, with cell walls removed and larvae (drones) about 3 or 4 days old: Waugsberg, CC BY SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bienenwabe_mit_Eiern_und_Brut_5.jpg

beekeeping in straw skeps: In Lecture VI, Rudolf Steiner discussed differences in manmade hives of straw vs. wood.
Dr. Steiner noted that traditional beekeepers placed skeps in propitious locations for taking advantage of breezes to which straw hives are sensitive.
Theatrum Sanitatis, Plate 181; Biblioteca Casanatense MS. 4182, ca. 1390-1400; one of 13 extant copies of Tacuinum Sanitatis, medieval wellbeing book based on Ibn Butlan of Baghdad's 11th century Taqwim al‑sihha: Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons @ http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:27-alimenti,_miele,_Taccuino_Sanitatis,_Casanatense_4182..jpg

Wooden apiaries: In Lecture VI, Rudolf Steiner explained that, in noting differences between straw and wood manmade hives, he was not suggesting reversion to straw skegs.
Dr. Steiner emphasized that, in replacing old methods (straw skegs) with new methods (wooden hives), it is essential to maintain balance by replacing valuable aspects of former method.
On an Apiary (На пасеке); 1916 painting by Aleksandr Vladimirovich Makovsky (March 24 [Aprl 5], 1869-Oct. 26, 1924): Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Amakovsky_apiary.jpg

Honeycomb in abandoned nest: In lectures delivered in 1923, Rudolf Steiner predicted the current, dire situation with bees, including Colony Collapse Disorder.
abandoned Apis florea honeycomb, Thailand: Sean.hoyland at en.wikipedia, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Apis_florea_nest_closeup2.jpg

In Lecture III, Rudolf Steiner discussed value of artificial feedings for bees that include chamomile tea.
Chamomile (Asteraceae family) flowers are important nectar sources for bees.
honeybee on German chamomile (Matricaria chamomilla) flower: Schizoschaf, CC BY SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Honigbiene_auf_Kamillenbluete.JPG

The relationship between bees and beekeepers/honey-collectors, which has endured for 15,000 years, faces an uncertain future, as predicted by Rudolf Steiner in lectures given in 1923.
The Beekeepers and the Birdnester (Das Blatt zeigt vermutlich einen Handlungsablauf): ca. 1568 pen and ink drawing by Pieter Bruegel (Brueghel) the Elder (c. 1525 – September 9, 1569)
Kupferstichkabinett (Museum of Prints and Drawings), Berlin, east central Germany: Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Die_Bienenzüchter_(Bruegel).jpg

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