Version 3.2
“You should research real beekeepers!”
On the need to transition beekeeping
The necessary shift to new food systems and convivial conservation requires also a shift to new beekeeping practices as the currently dominant ones are also tied up in colonial legacies, exploitation and extraction, control and efficiency, private ownership and accumulation. The presentation focuses on beekeeping practices that evolved in niches of East Asia and Europe through convivial multispecies relations and are regenerative, sufficient, distributed, commoning, and caring.
The necessary downshifting of the globalized food system towards a postgrowth driven system is gaining traction and accordingly there also needs to be changes in beekeeping and pollination. The domesticated honeybee Apis mellifera is currently the prime pollinator of most commercial food items around the world, however this dependence and the global presence of this livestock species originating from Europe is not by chance, nor by nature. It is part of the colonial history that extends into today’s neoliberal reality driven by a limitless growth ideology. Together with the plantation style agriculture dominated by monoculture cash crop exports and fossil fuel addiction were exploitative beekeeping practices developed that are globally considered as professional and most ‘advanced’, downgrading, and sometimes even illegalizing traditional, indigenous, local and alternative practices, as well as non-domesticated species as inefficient and invaluable, disposable and dangerous. And while efforts like intensified organic agriculture or migrant beekeeping corporations moving their bees with eTrucks and monitoring them remotely via apps might show some minor sustainability improvements on the operational level, they are not sufficient solutions for the existing challenges.
The presentation focuses on beekeeping practices that evolved in niches of East Asia and Europe through convivial multispecies relations and are regenerative, sufficient, distributed, commoning, and caring. Their scaling-out means for many beekeepers learning new skills and abandoning others, for policy makers to formulate integrated pollinator policies and establish funding schemes, and for the public to be educated and included.
Info
Day:
2023-08-30
Start time:
11:15
Duration:
00:15
Room:
ZV-8-4
Type:
Paper Presentation
Theme:
Alternative economies
