Motivation: “the initiation, direction, intensity, persistence,

and quality of behavior,” Maehr, M., & Meyer, H. (1997).

I’m a creativity researcher and I continuously read scholarly articles to deepen my knowledge on the topic of motivation. Turns out, motivation is a key ingredient for having the willingness to “think outside the box”. Motivation is also important for learning, and I have had personal experience with many new beekeepers who were learning the basics.  I’ve come to believe that new beekeepers continue or quit beekeeping within a year or two – largely based on two things: 1) how they were introduced to beekeeping and, 2) their personal motivational orientation to learning. Here’s how I came to this conclusion.

The old saying “The right tool for the right job” is common-sense advice that applies to a wide range of situations. A person thinking about the concept of having the right tool might conjure up images of a carpenter’s hammer or mechanic’s wrench. For the beekeeper, images of a favorite hive tool or bee brush are likely selections. Tools in beekeeping, however, are more than mechanical devices that open-up hive lids or scoop day-old larvae out of a cell and place it into a plastic queen cup.  The right tool “adage” occurs in situations that involve beekeepers maximizing a colony’s ability to produce a particular product. It’s a matter of knowing what you want from your bees.