Following beekeeping: More-than-human practice in agrifood

Ongoing losses of pollinators challenge agrifood futures and highlight the need to examine beekeeping practices, and yet social sciences have little to say on the subject. This paper takes beekeeping, a fundamental if often overlooked aspect of contemporary agrifood production, as its subject. Beekeeping is examined through a combination of more-than-human studies and social practice theory, literatures with which agrifood scholars have yet to widely engage. The paper outlines connections and tensions between these fields, to develop a vital approach to more-than-human practice. The potential of such an approach is illustrated through ethnographic investigation of commercial beekeeping in Australia. Beekeeping is followed through three constituent activities: setting fruit; shifting hives; and, chasing honey. This exploration reveals shifting agency among practitioners, frictions among considerations of the practice and its practitioners, and new dis/connections among commodities, agendas, and places. This approach to contemporary beekeeping indicates other possible points of intervention important to future practice, with wider implications for agrifood production and research.