Today's podcast is a recording I made of a talk by Adebisi Adekunle during the BBKA Spring Convention at Stoneleigh in April 2011.

Adebisi Adekunle - Bisi is an Amateur beekeeper with 10 years experience in the UK (Temperate climate with Apis Mellifera Mellifera & hybrids) and in Nigeria (Tropical climate with Apis Mellifera Adansonni).  She is a member of Romsey (Hants), Gillingham & Shaftesbury (Dorset), Twickenham & Thames Valley Beekeeping Associations. Bisi is the Honey Show Manager for the Hampshire Honey Show and a member of Slow Food International and the British Beekeepers Assoc. (BBKA).

The sound quality is reasonable, although there is some background hum from a piece of equipment in the kitchen.

This is a recording of the Q&A session following my talk at the BBKA Spring Convention in Stoneleigh on April 15 2011.

The title of this talk - What Is Wrong With Modern Beekeeping? - begs a question: is there something wrong with modern beekeeping?

My contention is that there is indeed much that is wrong with it, and that the root of the problem lies in the anthropocentric, pre-Darwinian belief that we are in charge: that humankind has a God-given right to dominion over all other forms of life, and that animals – including bees – were created purely to serve us.

'Modern' beekeeping can be said to have begun in the year 1852 – the year that Langstroth patented his hive. He did so, it should be noted, with the express purpose of making the commercial exploitation of bees a practical possibility.

1852 was also the year that Langstroth published his book, The Hive and the Honeybee, in which we find the following passage:

“The Creator intended the bee for the comfort of man, as truly as he did the horse or the cow.

The honey bee was... created not merely with the ability to store up its delicious nectar for its own use, but with certain properties which fitted it to be domesticated, and to labor for man, and without which, he would no more have been able to subject it to his control, than to make a useful beast of burden of a lion or a tiger.”ⁱ

Which is to say that, according to this creed, not only were bees created in order to provide us with something sweet, but that they were allocated 'certain properties' that enable us to domesticate them. In those days, most people shared Langstroth's belief that 'The Creator intended the bee for the comfort of man' and that its purpose was to 'labor for man'.

And yet, unbeknown to the Reverend Langstroth, some twenty years earlier, a little ship had set sail from Plymouth harbour on a five-year voyage that was to change our understanding of the world forever. That ship was The Beagle, and just seven years after Langstroth completed his book, Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species.

That was over 150 years ago. And yet, even today, despite Darwin's insights having been tested over and over by science; despite overwhelming evidence that all life is interdependent; despite irrefutable proof of the consequences of worldwide destruction of habitat and the poisoning of our life-giving soil by profit-driven corporations; despite all that, we see people still behaving as if they had God-given dominion over life on earth.

And what of so-called 'modern beekeeping'? Has it fully embraced the post-Darwinian world? Or does it still operate from that old testament, fundamentalist paradigm? Are we – as appears to be the case - still teaching people how to 'manage' and 'control' bees, when we should be teaching them how to observe, listen to and work with the bees?

The Guardian, 10^th April 2011