The October 24, 2017 issue of the Apis Information Resource News has been published. It contains information on evaluation of tis newsletter,pesticides and glyphosate in honey, organic honey Issues, conserving digital resources, pollination and native Bees.
It’s my birthday. Hard to believe that I have been on this earth for 75 years! And that I have written this monthly newsletter in various forms for almost half that time. Given this realization, I thought it would be important to take a step back and see where this effort might be going in the future. A wake up call has been a series of unsubscriptions. The flood began during the time of presidential election, when it became clear that my comments concerning the current political environment were out of synchrony with some readers. It has continued since then, but at a reduced rate. However, there has only been one new subscription in those same months.
Therefore, dear readers, I am asking for some kind of formalized feed back on the current effort. What do subscribers like or dislike about the current form of this newsletter? One issue might be its length. Attempting to keep up with the flood of information concerning beekeeping events and issues, means having to decide what to focus on. A current strategy is to simply point (link to) other information organs, particularly the releases by Fran Bach at the Western Apicultural Society (WAS). Is this effective? Should it continue? Is it too much?
Do readers like the monthly format or would they prefer more frequent, shorter postings, perhaps using an approach more toward a social media style. The current format, for example, doesn’t allow readers to comment on specific content. Perhaps a forum-like application would be more appropriate? One thing I’m considering is a closer association of this newsletter with the website that I am continually developing, the Apis Information Resource Center at https://beekeep.info . I have also looking at other media, possibly changing the format completely to a video format (Vlog) or strictly audio (podcast). Some of these efforts I have noted in my list of contributors to the website.
Another thing I’m going to start doing is presenting a “monthly surprise,” revisiting some writings that have not seen print for many years. This month concerns “apicentric beekeeping,” in a series of letters from the hive from a surprising source. Let me know your thoughts.
See the full post here.
