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In 1923 Rudolf Steiner predicted the dire state of today's honeybee. He stated that, within fifty to eighty years, we would see the consequences of mechanizing the forces that had previously operated organically in the beehive. Such practices include breeding queen bees artificially. The fact that over sixty percent of the American honeybee population has died during the past ten years, and that this trend is continuing around the world, should make us aware of the importance of the issues discussed in these lectures. Steiner began this series of lectures on bees in response to a question from an audience of workers at the Goetheanum. From physical depictions of the daily activities of bees to the most elevated esoteric insights, these lectures describe the unconscious wisdom of the beehive and its connection to our experience of health, culture, and the cosmos. Bees is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding the true nature of the honeybee, as well as those who wish to heal the contemporary crisis of the beehive. Bees includes an essay by David Adams, "From Queen Bee to Social Sculpture: The Artistic Alchemy of Joseph Beuys."
241 pages, Kindle Edition
First published February 3, 1923
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742 people want to read
About the author
Rudolf Steiner
4,317 books1,099 followersAuthor also wrote under the name Rudolph Steiner.
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...
Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner was an Austrian occultist, social reformer, architect, esotericist, and claimed clairvoyant. Steiner gained initial recognition at the end of the nineteenth century as a literary critic and published works including The Philosophy of Freedom. At the beginning of the twentieth century he founded an esoteric spiritual movement, anthroposophy, with roots in German idealist philosophy and theosophy. His teachings are influenced by Christian Gnosticism or neognosticism. Many of his ideas are pseudoscientific. He was also prone to pseudohistory.
In the first, more philosophically oriented phase of this movement, Steiner attempted to find a synthesis between science and spirituality. His philosophical work of these years, which he termed "spiritual science", sought to apply what he saw as the clarity of thinking characteristic of Western philosophy to spiritual questions, differentiating this approach from what he considered to be vaguer approaches to mysticism. In a second phase, beginning around 1907, he began working collaboratively in a variety of artistic media, including drama, dance and architecture, culminating in the building of the Goetheanum, a cultural centre to house all the arts. In the third phase of his work, beginning after World War I, Steiner worked on various ostensibly applied projects, including Waldorf education, biodynamic agriculture, and anthroposophical medicine.
Steiner advocated a form of ethical individualism, to which he later brought a more explicitly spiritual approach. He based his epistemology on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's world view in which "thinking…is no more and no less an organ of perception than the eye or ear. Just as the eye perceives colours and the ear sounds, so thinking perceives ideas." A consistent thread that runs through his work is the goal of demonstrating that there are no limits to human knowledge.
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...
Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner was an Austrian occultist, social reformer, architect, esotericist, and claimed clairvoyant. Steiner gained initial recognition at the end of the nineteenth century as a literary critic and published works including The Philosophy of Freedom. At the beginning of the twentieth century he founded an esoteric spiritual movement, anthroposophy, with roots in German idealist philosophy and theosophy. His teachings are influenced by Christian Gnosticism or neognosticism. Many of his ideas are pseudoscientific. He was also prone to pseudohistory.
In the first, more philosophically oriented phase of this movement, Steiner attempted to find a synthesis between science and spirituality. His philosophical work of these years, which he termed "spiritual science", sought to apply what he saw as the clarity of thinking characteristic of Western philosophy to spiritual questions, differentiating this approach from what he considered to be vaguer approaches to mysticism. In a second phase, beginning around 1907, he began working collaboratively in a variety of artistic media, including drama, dance and architecture, culminating in the building of the Goetheanum, a cultural centre to house all the arts. In the third phase of his work, beginning after World War I, Steiner worked on various ostensibly applied projects, including Waldorf education, biodynamic agriculture, and anthroposophical medicine.
Steiner advocated a form of ethical individualism, to which he later brought a more explicitly spiritual approach. He based his epistemology on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's world view in which "thinking…is no more and no less an organ of perception than the eye or ear. Just as the eye perceives colours and the ear sounds, so thinking perceives ideas." A consistent thread that runs through his work is the goal of demonstrating that there are no limits to human knowledge.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
October 30, 2019
Engaged with this after Ross Conrad mentioned it in his book Natural Beekeeping. I'm very suprised I forced myself to go through the whole thing. Why did I do it??? I do enjoy spending bursts of time in Steiner's universe. But he says so many unbased things (and I speaking in terms of his observational assertions, not his spiritual framework) and uses metaphor so liberally to describe such things (often to the point of confusion), that I had no idea if what I was hearing was true or wistful thinking. Such gems as "as you know, cats smell through their whiskers" of course make me question if indeed ants have such a role in the formation of formic acid (and do cats smell through their whiskers ???! God, after this I dunno). It's the sort of book you need to supplement with repeated Google searches, and seeing I had no Internet while I was engaging with ol' rudy, I really gleaned nothing from this text but some fun ways to think about bees and many unassured mutterings of "well, sure, maybe that's the case"
Listened to on audiobook via rudolf steiner audio dot com. The narrator's ever affable voice was a major reason I continued to engage with the text. Thank you, unknown narrator, for your passion and efforts!
Listened to on audiobook via rudolf steiner audio dot com. The narrator's ever affable voice was a major reason I continued to engage with the text. Thank you, unknown narrator, for your passion and efforts!
Read
September 1, 2009Just got this through inter library loan. Apparently, in the 1920's, he foresaw some of the problems facing bees and beekeeping today. I'm excited to read it.
8/19 - This is turning out to be deeply weird. I'm going to jump around a bit, but the introduction says, unlike wasps and ants, bees are ruled by Venus, but because sex is sublimated, they can live as an embodiment of selfless love. Not quite what I was expecting.
8/25 - I got this book because of my interest in bees, not knowing anything about Steiner, who turns out to be a philosopher, creator of Waldorf schools and eurythmics, among other things. While this book may be valid, it doesn't contain any information currently useful to me as a beekeeper.
8/19 - This is turning out to be deeply weird. I'm going to jump around a bit, but the introduction says, unlike wasps and ants, bees are ruled by Venus, but because sex is sublimated, they can live as an embodiment of selfless love. Not quite what I was expecting.
8/25 - I got this book because of my interest in bees, not knowing anything about Steiner, who turns out to be a philosopher, creator of Waldorf schools and eurythmics, among other things. While this book may be valid, it doesn't contain any information currently useful to me as a beekeeper.
February 27, 2010
Fascinating. What I gleaned: if you don't eat honey at least a little, you will not be healthy. Cool book if you're into bees. Bees are from the sun realm = love.
February 23, 2025
I am torn about this book. I find Rudolf so fascinating, and the way his mind works is an absolute trip that I delight in when it comes to his other works. On the one hand, he was completely correct about Artificial Queen Breeding in apiculture and a hundred years later we are indeed seeing the impact of humans messing around with nature in this manner. It is a very serious issue now, as he said it would be. He has a lot of interesting ideas and things to say that I do think are worth ruminating on.
On the other hand, probably 50% of this is just very confidently asserted nonsense, which I found annoying to read; he doesn’t show himself in a very positive light when he is insulting his scientific colleagues and anyone who dares to disagree with him on what are ultimately a lot of issues that he doesn’t actually have any data to support. It is hard for me to take seriously when his arguments are basically “these dumb-dummy-dum-dums don’t know anything!” But in fact on many things he is simply incorrect as we can now see 100 years later with science. There is nothing I dislike more than arrogance in people who claim to be scientifically minded.
In his other books, which are written by him and are not simply transcriptions of his lectures, his personality is much more palatable.
Things I loved: exploring the anthroposophical world view, including bees as a super organism/the hive as a collective consciousness. Amazing. The holistic view of nature and a look at humanity’s relationship with bees is fascinating.
Taken from a spiritual perspective this book is great; taken from a scientific perspective, it is hit and miss.
For apiculturists reading this book: take his arguments into consideration, but do your research and understand that this was written a hundred years ago so a lot of it will be incorrect science. And that’s okay. It is interesting, it is not gospel.
On the other hand, probably 50% of this is just very confidently asserted nonsense, which I found annoying to read; he doesn’t show himself in a very positive light when he is insulting his scientific colleagues and anyone who dares to disagree with him on what are ultimately a lot of issues that he doesn’t actually have any data to support. It is hard for me to take seriously when his arguments are basically “these dumb-dummy-dum-dums don’t know anything!” But in fact on many things he is simply incorrect as we can now see 100 years later with science. There is nothing I dislike more than arrogance in people who claim to be scientifically minded.
In his other books, which are written by him and are not simply transcriptions of his lectures, his personality is much more palatable.
Things I loved: exploring the anthroposophical world view, including bees as a super organism/the hive as a collective consciousness. Amazing. The holistic view of nature and a look at humanity’s relationship with bees is fascinating.
Taken from a spiritual perspective this book is great; taken from a scientific perspective, it is hit and miss.
For apiculturists reading this book: take his arguments into consideration, but do your research and understand that this was written a hundred years ago so a lot of it will be incorrect science. And that’s okay. It is interesting, it is not gospel.
October 13, 2014
not as easy as "the four temperaments," this is pretty much on the same level as the Agriculture lectures. one difference is a more casual relationship with the audience, something like familiarity, and considerably more interactive. i love the end of the last lecture: "Finally i would like to take this opportunity to wish you all a very happy, joyful, inwardly uplifting Christmas." sometimes Steiner is challenging in complexity, but i feel that this statement is the true essence of his message, that we may all be inwardly uplifted.
September 30, 2015
To quote Steiner, “Printer’s ink as come as a new authority in addition to all the rest. If anything is printed people believe there must be something in it!" -Anyway the read is fascinating, imaginative, and mostly factual.
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June 28, 2023absolutely impossible to rate this book. reads like greek philosophy. some absolute bangers. some absolutely unhinged thoughts. surprising amount of dense chemistry (questionably scientific) and diagrams.
January 26, 2022
It was great when we first read this book. Later we started translating into our own language and realized that there was a certain meaning that we needed to understand well. It is better to understand its main meaning.
August 22, 2017
This is not one of my favorites.
October 28, 2022
Rudolf Steiner knew 100 years ago what would happen to bees in our time. If you read the book with complete focus, it becomes very clear what beekeepers can do to restore the bee population.
June 17, 2018
Hmm.... not really 'my cup of tea'.
I read this to learn more about bees but it is (as I could have expected :) ) more a collection of esoteric lectures. Still, Mr. Steiner was right about the importance of bees.
It is clear the lectures were givin in 1923, some things have changed since then. In this historical perspective there lectures are very interesting indeed.
But....it is not easily read, I guess 'you had to be there' :)
I read this to learn more about bees but it is (as I could have expected :) ) more a collection of esoteric lectures. Still, Mr. Steiner was right about the importance of bees.
It is clear the lectures were givin in 1923, some things have changed since then. In this historical perspective there lectures are very interesting indeed.
But....it is not easily read, I guess 'you had to be there' :)
April 22, 2012
MUST READ for anyone interested in, well, bees. but particularly for steiner fans who happen to be bee enthusiasts, keepers, hobbyists, etc. STEINER predicted over 100 yrs ago that if we continued artificially impregnating queens and abandoning organic horticulture that we'd lose our precious bees...and that's precisely what's happening.
September 4, 2022
Audio Book's I have to listen to more than once or pace myself chapter to chapter, because the truth is I fall asleep. This one I think I have heard most of it, some of it two or three times. Just a confession that when I put it in the have read pile, it might be have a few gaps. 😸🤐
September 4, 2008
Pretty good stuff here - this is a lecture Steiner gave to a group of construction workers. Don't get me wrong, I think he's absolutely out of his mind, but it's nice to imagine sometimes.
August 5, 2009
everything i know about bees
August 30, 2011
Kind of difficult to read. That may have been the result of creating a book in English from a bunch of lectures spoken in German.
August 24, 2012
Best introductory book to read and start getting into erudite world of Steiner
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews