When I joined the Management Committee of the International Bee Research Association (IBRA) I did not expect to end up, among other responsibilities, recruiting new editors first for Bee World (JAR’s “popular” “sister” publication, which just finished its centennial celebrations), and then for JAR itself. After all: While I have plenty of experience running Non Governmental Organizations – that experience was gained mostly in the Fair Trade movement (I was one of the founders of the Fair Trade labelling movement, and wrote the first PhD Thesis on Fair Trade back in the 1980s). I am certainly not a bee-scientist – and even when it comes to practical beekeeping I am something of a rookie: My three hives in London have provided a learning opportunity and fascination for just about six years only so far. As a result of frequent work-travel abroad, I have actually learned more about beekeeping in India and other Asian countries: My small honey business has been trying for years – so far in vain – to overcome rules and regulations that were written for European honey bees and moderate climates, not for A. florea, cerana, and dorsata.
But I digress: When we had to take a decision on the new editorship of JAR – we opted for an experiment (maybe because of my “out of the hive” – eh: “box” background): We appointed a team to edit JAR: Maria Bouga as senior editor – and, in an attempt to reach out to a wider section of expertise and age, Melanie Parejo as her junior associate.
After managing the appointment processes of the (now three) editors my next unexpected “promotion” was to become the “link person” not only for the magazine editors, but also for the newly introduced Editorial Boards – as well as with the publisher Taylor and Francis.
And one year on, I am happy to say that our experiment with the joint editorship for JAR works well. When we hired the editorial “tandem”, we were so uncertain whether we had done “the right thing” that we put a review of the arrangement after a year into their contracts.
12 months on, Maria had to remind me about this paragraph – I had simply forgotten: The two have been running such a tight ship, the “non-bee-scientist-outsider” could completely relax: From dealing with a backlog of submissions to complementing each other with their individual areas of expertise: They are certainly a force to reckon with. IBRA is grateful for their dedicated hard work, which goes far beyond what we could have hoped for.
Finally a word on the cover of this issue of JAR: I commissioned Professor Yunus Khimani (an artist from Jaipur/India) to create an image which (as far as I know) for the first time depicts the Indian Hindu bee goddess Bhramari Devi1 and the Hindu God Lord Kama2 together (a kind of “Bollywood-take” on the Diana and Apollo story – or is it Diana and the Cupid(?) -, with a strong Indian twist: Note the bow made of sugar cane, and the string made of bees).
This work of art was done on a tablet – ancient history and modern technology came together in a star moment! Unfortunately the judges at the World Bee Awards at the APIMONDIA seemed to have been as unfamiliar with this new technology as with the content – as they were with some of the more “unusual” honeys in the competition, which failed the (Western) lab parameters.
But making it onto the cover of JAR is a far more important recognition of a unique picture – as unique and as unconventional as having JAR edited by a team of two female scientists.
IBRA Management Committee Member
[email protected]
Notes
2 The Sacred Bee in Ancient Times and Folklore by Hilda M. Ransome, originally published in London in 1937 (1986), p. 45.