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Be(e)coming Pollinators: Beekeeping and Perceptions of Environmentalism in Massachusetts

Summary

This research examines how hobbyist beekeepers in Massachusetts view their practice as environmental stewardship, while highlighting potential conflicts between honey bee management and native pollinator conservation. The study reveals important tensions between individual environmental actions and broader ecosystem health. Impacts on everyday life: – Raises awareness about the complex relationships between managed honey bees and wild pollinators – Challenges common assumptions about beekeeping as universally beneficial for the environment – Highlights the importance of collaborative approaches to environmental conservation – Demonstrates how individual environmental actions can have unintended consequences – Shows the need to consider broader ecosystem impacts when pursuing environmental initiatives

Background

In an era marked by mass extinctions and biodiversity crises, it is increasingly crucial to intentionally cultivate more inclusive and just multispecies landscapes. The pollinator crisis refers to global findings that population and diversity decline among animal pollinators is being further exacerbated by decline and homogenization among flowering plants. Eighty-seven percent of flowering plants require or benefit from animal pollination, making these contact zones essential sites for most terrestrial life.

Objective

This study applies a critical hybridity framework to examine the entanglement of the pollinator crisis with hobbyist beekeeping in Massachusetts. The research investigates how beekeepers understand apiculture in the wider landscape and what dominant narratives are driving how beekeepers engage with and adapt to the landscape. It also explores whether hybrid and relational approaches to beekeeping could provide pathways toward more just socioecological futures.

Results

The study found that beekeeping is widely understood as a form of environmentalism, both as mitigation for and adaptation to the pollinator crisis. Many beekeepers view their practice as beneficial for the environment through increased pollination services and raising environmental awareness. However, this narrative often relies on capitalistic and instrumental logic that obscures the hybrid nature of landscapes. Some beekeepers demonstrated deeper engagement with hybrid perspectives, recognizing concerns about competition with native bees and pathogen transmission.

Conclusion

If more just and biodiverse futures are to be realized, beekeeping communities must foster increasingly hybrid visions of apiculture as situated within socioecological and contested landscapes. This requires moving beyond individualistic approaches toward more collaborative solutions that consider the wider socio-environmental landscape and involve various stakeholders including community groups, conservation organizations, and researchers.
  • Published in:PLOS One,
  • Study Type:Ethnographic Study,
  • Source: 10.1371/journal.pone.0263281
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