Commoning the bloom? Rethinking bee forage management in industrial agriculture

Abstract

Managed and wild bee populations are declining around the world, in part due to lost access to bee forage (i.e., nectar and pollen). As bee forage diminishes, the remaining acres become sites of contestation between beekeepers, land managers, ecologists, and regulatory agencies. This article applies a commons framing to contextualize these conflicts and attempts to resolve them. Drawing from the concepts of commons and commoning, I argue that nectar and pollen are common-pool resources for pollinators, beekeepers, and land managers, currently managed through varied access arrangements such as informal usufruct rights and pseudo-commoning practices. Like commoning, pseudo-commoning aims to collectively manage a resource through a set of protocols that involve equitable resource sharing and communication. However, because pseudo-commons are implemented from the top down, for example, from institutional actors driven in part by economic interests, they often do not result in widespread adoption on the ground. Through a case in California almond orchards, I make two additional arguments. First, because beekeepers are largely migratory and do not own the land they need for production, their subordinate position to landowners can challenge equitable bee forage management. Second, while floral pseudo-commons may aim to counter the negative effects of industrialized agricultural production (e.g., by limiting pesticide exposure to honey bees), they also provide a “fix” that supports and expands industrial agriculture by stabilizing managed bee pollination services. Increasing reliance on managed bee pollination services can thus disincentivize transitions to sustainable food production, such as adopting diversified practices that would support native bee populations and reduce the need for managed honey bees on farms.

Geographies of the pollinator commons

“…The nature of the problem varies, depending on how you conceptualize the key, common resource at hand. Different scholars have alternatively conceptualized the pollinators themselves (Cheung 1973;Durant 2021), the pollination services they provide (Allen et al 2012;Goldman, Thompson and Daily 2007;Faure, Mouysset and Gaba 2021), and/or the foraging resources for pollinators (Cheung 1973;Durant 2021;Lonsdorf, Koh and Ricketts 2020;Mouillard-Lample et al 2022) as common pool resources. Another key uncertainty we discovered in current scholarship on the subject is the lack of articulation of the inherent differences between wild and managed pollinators.…”

“…Another key uncertainty we discovered in current scholarship on the subject is the lack of articulation of the inherent differences between wild and managed pollinators. In general, scholars who conceive of pollinators as a commons have been primarily focused on managed pollinators and have shown that collaborative governance that supports managed pollinators can result in benefits beyond individual farms (Cheung 1973;Durant 2021). Other scholars who are interested in wild pollinators have largely focused on their habitats and foraging resources (Goldman, Thompson and Daily 2007).…”

“…CPRs are those resources that are subtractable but not excludable, therefore CPR institutions are developed in order to coordinate these fundamental problems of resource use and access. Durant (2021) argues that both pollinators and forage resources can be considered and acted upon as common pool resources in the sense that they exhibit these characteristic problems of excludability and subtractability. Yet, while pollinators are mobile, the floral resources that pollinators depend on for survival are sedentary.…”

“…Such efforts have been described by Durant (2021, 2) not as a true commons but as a "pseudocommons," because they are often implemented "through top-down mechanisms (rather than emerging from a collaboration between beekeepers and farmers)." Moreover, efforts such as Honey Bee Best Management Practices have been criticized on the grounds that they provide a technical "fix" to the problem of pollination scarcity in agricultural production through a focus on managed hives, rather than helping stabilize or encourage wild pollinator communities (Durant 2021;Ellis et al 2020).…”

“…At the same time however, in heterogeneous agricultural landscapes with a mix of large and small farms with crops with varying levels of pollinator dependence, conflicts between farmers and between farmers and beekeepers could arise. In the cases described by Cheung (1973) and Durant (2021) where honeybees are collaboratively governed for their pollination services, the bee itself is the (private) resource that is being sold (rented). Most beekeepers do not make the bulk of their income from honey production, but rather from providing the bees and their pollination services.…”