Consider:

“If you aim at nothing, you will hit it.” I add: every time!

“If you don’t know where you are going, you won’t get where you want to go.”

Or how about this one: “Not having a clear goal leads to death by a thousand compromises.” This might apply particularly well to keeping bees. And having substandard clear goals isn’t much better.

Sure, we should have goals in beekeeping.  But it is too easy to settle for mediocre, half-hearted goals that leave the door too far open for failure.  Most who read this post are in the hobby category of beekeeping.  Hats off to any who have a commercial operation and have as their goal to make a living with bees. But for most of us, we have a few hives of bees alongside another job and while we want the bees to do well, our livelihood is not much effected.  We are properly disappointed when we find our bees have all died over the winter, but we shrug our shoulders, buy a few nucs, start over or throw in the towel altogether and conclude that we are better bee losers than keepers.

I know the feeling.  But maybe our goal (or goals) is a little too small, too short-sighted, too compromised (to borrow from our quote above) to get us far because, even though our beekeeping might be a hobby, we want it to become more than a memory and a pile of unused equipment in the corner of the garage.

So what goals should we pursue?

· Honey!  Of course.  Why not.  Our very own honey from our very own hives.  

· Pollination.  By having a few colonies we can pollinate those apples or cherries or strawberries.

· 20 hives. (or whatever other number you want to put there.)  Numbers. Quantities.  Growth.  

· Save the bees!  The bees are endangered so I’ll save them by having some. Maybe.

· Save the planet!  Really?  

As noble as all those goals are, any of these might yet fall short and leave us with the failure of just another good idea that becomes a memory, a “has been”, a waste, or worse, an embarrassment.  What kind of goal would keep the shrug out of our shoulders?

My dream.   Remember those words? Dedicated. Engaged. Enduring. Commitment.  

We don’t want “death by a thousand compromises” and those aren’t words of compromise.  We don’t want the death of our bees.  We don’t want the death of our dreams.  We don’t want the death of our goal.  If we set our goals too low we will compromise.  Something will die.  Short term, our bees will die.  Long term so will our dream.  What goal will keep the bees and our dream alive?

Let’s get our feet planted firmly on earth and our heads out of the clouds. Let’s roll up our sleeves and engage our God-given minds.  Let’s set some attainable goals and then stay there through thick and thin.  

Ready? Maybe not glamorous or earthshaking but I propose that we make the simple, essential, and far-reaching goal of getting our bees through next winter, alive!  What will that take?

– Jonathan Showalter, President of Beeline of Michigan

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