5 MINUTE SURVEY for beekeepers & bee farmers - your opinion on 'sustainability'

Fay Kahane at Ecology Cornwall

Fay Kahane at Ecology CornwallFay Kahane at Ecology CornwallFay Kahane at Ecology Cornwall
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Beekeeping Research
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Fay Kahane at Ecology Cornwall

Fay Kahane at Ecology CornwallFay Kahane at Ecology CornwallFay Kahane at Ecology Cornwall
Home
Beekeeping Research
Blog
More
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Beekeeping research

Project overview and aims

Different honeybee management practices impact honeybees and wild pollinators in different ways. Similarly, different beekeeping / land management policies and practices impact beekeepers in different ways. Having built a beekeeper-researcher partnership based in SW England, I am facilitating this partnership to design, undertake and analyse fieldwork to explore what ‘sustainable beekeeping’ means, and how we can/should translate this into action. 


Spanning the disciplines of ecology and politics, and supervised by Professor Juliet Osborne (pollination ecology), Dr Karen Scott (politics),  Professor Stefano Pascucci (business studies: sustainability) and Dr Christoph Grüter (University of Bristol: social insect behavioural ecology), we aim to:


  • Understand and characterise beekeeping perspectives and narratives in the UK; investigating motivations, values and power relations, and how these are produced and perpetuated.


  • Characterise 'pathways to sustainability' that represent the diversity of beekeeping perspectives.


  • Influence policy and governance procedures, and feed back to beekeepers nationally. 

Go to Research Blog

Calling all UK beekeepers / bee farmers / bee guardians...

What do you think? Which factors (economic, ecological, political, social) are most important to you with regard to the sustainability of beekeeping? Please complete the survey below.

5 minute survey for beekeepers & bee farmers

Publications from this research

My first paper "Motivations underpinning honeybee management practices: A Q methodology study with UK beekeepers" was published in Ambio (A Journal of Environment and Society) in 2022.

Read our first publication
Video presentation - beekeeper motivations

Beekeeper research partnership - what are we doing?

Holding workshops

Using hive scales

Using hive scales

...over winter, with a small 'core' team of experienced beekeepers in SW England, who have different approaches to beekeeping / bee farming / bee guardianship. This team is in the later stages of designing 2024 fieldwork.

Using hive scales

Using hive scales

Using hive scales

...to record the weight of individual colonies every hour from May - Sep 2024. These scales are accurate to within 20g, and will allow us to record the response of colonies to different management techniques.

Hive scales (external website)

Your input

Using hive scales

Your input

Are you a bee farmer or a natural beekeeper in Southwest England, and would you like weight data for several colonies over the season?


If you'd like to be more involved you could potentially join the 'core' team too.

Contact Fay

Spring 2024 - gallery

    'Beekeeper Motivations' research - recorded presentation

    Here's a recording of me presenting our first publication  to beekeepers in 2021 (online due to Covid - we missed having that cream tea together).

    Research overview

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    Fay Kahane

    Currently based at the Environment & Sustainability Institute, University of Exeter, Penryn, Cornwall. TR10 9FE

    Copyright © 2024 Fay Kahane - All Rights Reserved. 

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