What is the best way to help teach our children about how to deal with the challenges that will inevitably come in their future? One suggestion is to introduce them to beekeeping. As those of you who are beekeepers already know, beekeeping if full of plan bees (B’s). A lot of things don’t work out as planned, many times you are greeted with surprises, and you seem to constantly have to think on your feet to keep everything working smoothly.

We weren’t keeping bees back when our kids were young. I wish we had been since it would have been a great teaching tool. We had numerous instances with our own kids where we tried to teach them to think through problems and more importantly, be prepared that there may be a problem, and what you could do to resolve it. It was amazing how much resistance we got from them. They thought it was stupid that they had to even think about another way to do something because they already knew how they were going to do it. Well, sometimes it did work out as planned. Other times it didn’t, but rather than revert to their plan B and get it done, they simply got all upset because the original way didn’t work. News flash! Things don’t always work out as planned. Welcome to life. Get used to it.

One of the characteristics we see with some parents today is that they refuse to let their kids fail, at anything. They are constantly doing things for their kids, stepping in to represent their kids, or shielding their kids from any manner of life’s hardship. Don’t get me wrong, there are times when a parent has to do these things if it has to do with the health and well being of their kids. But far too many of these parents do this for seemingly everything. Their kids never get to fail at anything. The value in failing is learning. You will learn a lot when you are not successful. You learn what works and what doesn’t. You learn what you may need to work harder and get better at. You learn that things don’t always go your way. There will come a day when all our children will have to head out into the world on their own and do things for themselves. And no, they are not going to get participation trophies just for showing up. Things are not always going to go smoothly and there are going to be many bumps in the road. There will be times when they will have to resort to a plan B, or C, or D. So lets do our part to educate some young people now, by introducing them to beekeeping. The lessons learned will last them a lifetime. These lessons will help them to be successful in life, and also why it is important to have a plan “Bee”.