Les pratiques des apiculteurs : Entre relations à la nature et perceptions des contextes

Abstract

Having interviewed and visited the facilities of about forty beekeepers from different countries/regions of Western Europe (Alsace, Belgium, Tyrol, Iceland), we are struck by the great variety of practices they adopt with regard to bees, whether in terms of choice of race, sanitary treatment, feeding… practices that are also often inhabited by doubts, hesitations, guilt, in short by what we call trouble. To understand this diversity and this trouble, the article explores, on the one hand, the relationship that the beekeepers construct with nature (domination, care, concern to preserve the wilderness, participation to nature as a whole system) and, on the other hand, the way they perceive the contextual constraints on their activity (in terms of climate, biodiversity, health of the hives or availability of space for the hives).