Moving Day

Last Friday was our first excursion into "migratory beekeeping" as Monta and I delivered three of our nucs to the Kendall farm. The operation was makeshift. We placed the three closed up nucs in the back of our Vibe, covered them net-like fabric (you know, the type used in making wedding veils) and took the 20 mile trip off to Houston County and the Honey Run farm.

Chris and I introduced each nuc into a regular 10 frame hive box without any real incident. The bees' new homes will be right in the middle of a new orchard, surrounded by a diversity of plant life.

The Road to Non-Sustainability is Paved with Good Intentions

Readers of this blog recognize that "Treadmill of Production Theory" underlies many of my ideas on sustainable beekeeping and what I call "social apiculture": the idea that sustainable beekeeping is not simply a matter of how we manage our hives, nor where we locate our hives in the physical environment but also a matter of the very way human beings organize their own societies. The following is an illustration of some of these ideas. Originally, it was written as a comment to a friend's facebook status, but I decided instead to simply share it here.

Let's take a very real, concrete example: commercial migratory beekeeping. Even the largest commercial pollination service is more often than not a small family-run concern. Commercial beekeepers can make a comfortable living but still are just one or two months ahead of their creditors (like most of us). They take pride in the fact that their services help keep a variety of foods on America's dinner table.

Now let's say it's February, the beginning of the migratory beekeeping season and Mr. X is ready to truck his thousands of honeybee colonies into the California almond orchards. He discovers his bees aren't doing all that well. The mite count is high in his hives and they seem to have dysentery. A long-term sustainable approach might be to let Darwinian selection weed out the weak hives and breed from the survivors, however, that would mean losing many hives and possibly going bankrupt. Not only would this threaten his business but also his children's college fund, and next mortgage payment. He, instead, takes the short-term route, using miticides and fungicides on his hives, pumping the colonies with HFCS, trucking them out to the fields and hoping for the best. He knows this solution is not sustainable in that it only creates resistant mites and fungi over the long-term but his family does have to eat. So with all his good intentions he decides in favor of non-sustainability.

Bees and the Enduring Conflict, Part II

If the Treadmill of Production theory is correct, and if the treadmill economy is impacting the health of honeybees, than we are left to find solutions that are not in the current interests of any human being, whether rich or poor, whether an academic sociologist or a migratory beekeeper. All of us in growth economies have an interest in preserving that economy, which increasingly makes environmental withdrawals (e.g. resources, habitat) while increasing waste additions. We may delay the negatives, or ship these negative consequences off to developing countries, but ecological destruction globally will continue.

In a growth economy, social problems are dealt with by expanding the economic pie, rather than in cutting up the pieces more equally (redistribution). Expand the economy and you feed the poor. Expand the economy and you provide more jobs for the unemployed. Expand the economy so that scholarships are provided for education. Corporations can keep their profit with enough surplus so that no one is left out. (At least in theory and in rhetoric!) But increasing growth also means what I've said above-- increasing the amount of withdrawals from the ecosystem, and increasing the additions (i.e. waste) pumped back into it.

All of us might like to jump off the this treadmill but it isn't in our interests. My salary as an academic depends on the tuition of my students, endowments by generous donors, state and private aid to students, student loans, and research and teaching grants which all depend on the expansion of the economy. Migratory beekeepers find themselves stuck on the agribusiness treadmill and the realities of economic growth which, while no doubt negative for the health of the honeybee, is necessary for the economic survival of these relatively small family-run concerns. Hobby and Sideline beekeepers who use standard beekeeping equipment (whether natural beekeepers or their chemical-using brethren) are dependent on the success of commercial beekeepers on the treadmill, since the companies that provide them with equipment and bee packages primarily live off the purchases made by larger treadmill outfits. This demonstrates why pointing the finger at migratory beekeepers, and blaming them for honeybee decline is so unfair and almost hypocritical. If the treadmill of production theory is correct, the "enemy is all of us!."

The question, then, is it possible to stop or slow down the treadmill and what can we do, in the meantime, to save the honeybee? This calls for more than simply scientific/technological solutions, but to some type of social structural, cultural, economic and political changes that are well beyond any one of us to do and totally against our short-term interests.