Elsevier

Geoforum

Volume 108, January 2020, Pages 315-324
Geoforum

Telling times: More-than-human temporalities in beekeeping

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2019.08.018Get rights and content

Abstract

In this paper, I build on insights from temporal studies and more-than-human geographies to argue that there is need to delve more deeply into how, by whom, and to what ends the times in which we live become told. Empirically, the practice of beekeeping provides orientation for exploring intertwining temporalities and timescales as more-than-human accomplishments. Drawing on ethnographic research undertaken in Australia, three accounts are developed: the catastrophic futures related to calls to ‘save the bees’; intimate, embodied tempos and negotiated timings of visiting a hive; and seasonal cycles and rhythms beyond but integral to the life of a colony. Employing the concept of ‘telling times’ enables a gathering of these three accounts and highlights not only the eco-social significance of the current times, but the ways in which time becomes experienced, shared, and resonates through more-than-human practices of time- and world-making.

Introduction

We live in telling times. What is done, thought, accomplished in the now matters in significant ways, only some of which may be understood or understandable. Advisories of these vital ecosocial times may be found in (among other things) the proposal of the Anthropocene as a new age (Crutzen and Stoermer, 2000), the impending disaster symbolised by the Doomsday Clock (Mecklin, 2018), or the indication of massive biodiversity loss through warnings of a ‘Sixth Extinction’ (Leakey and Lewin, 1996). These are attempts to register shifts in how worlds become, and end. Each provides provocation to rethink and remake worldly relations, among humanity and nonhuman others in ways that might allow for mutual survival or even thriving; however, each also suggests that time is running out for such action. Whether or not such symbols and namings move us, they point to the significance of what Adam (2000) calls a ‘temporal gaze’ – a means of examining worlds through time and temporality.

How might one respond to the demand for ‘stories (and theories) that are just big enough to gather up the complexities and keep the edges open and greedy for surprising new and old connections’ (Haraway, 2016: 160)? To begin with, I argue we need to consider temporality in our accounts of the ‘complexity of specific culture-nature intersections in their in/visible and im/material expressions’ (Adam et al., 1997: 81). Narratives of particular sites and encounters not only convey temporality but also generate temporal affects (Crang, 1994). ‘Telling times’, then, points to the significance current ecosocial relations but also the importance of examining lived narratives of temporality. We need, in other words, to explore how and by whom the times in which we live become told.

What might it mean to understand time telling as more-than-human accomplishment? What might such tellings of time reveal about the significance of the times in which we live, whomever ‘we’ are? Which tellings of time come to matter? To attend these questions, I explore the intertwining of multiple temporalities and timescales through attention to one more-than-human practice: beekeeping. In doing so, this paper takes up recent calls to better attend gaps in exploring temporalities of more-than-human world-making (Bastian, 2012, Jones, 2011), and to demonstrate how situated accounts of intimate human-nonhuman relations stretch beyond the spacetimes of their immediacy (see Fitz-Henry, 2017, Phillips, 2017). Through detailing beekeeping, a patterning of lived temporalities emerges – refrains told, remade, reiterated through negotiated practice. Further, how time comes to be understood and experienced is shown to radiate. The times told through this paper travel not only with bees and keepers, but resound in wider worlds swayed through tales of catastrophe and loss, practice and coordinated tempos, encounters and seasonality. In highlighting multiple, entwined more-than-human temporalities, the case of beekeeping also helps reveal how select tellings of time both emerge from and remake worlds. In addition to demonstrating the complications of more-than-human temporal experiences, then, this paper gestures to how different senses of time and temporality become conveyed, coordinated, and contested. Such temporal accounts inform practices and the pivotal era in which we live in ways often unrecognised.

After outlining the paper’s conceptual framing for considering multispecies accounts of temporality and a short section on the context and methods of the research, this paper proceeds through three accounts of temporality that inform contemporary beekeeping. The first of these sections interprets recent projected catastrophic futures of bee loss, and the project of ‘saving the bees’. While seemingly distinct from more experiential accounts that orient the next sections, there is no doubt that the anticipated loss of bees echoes through beekeeping worlds. The next segment outlines beekeeping through the tempos, sequencing, and timings of intimate encounters of visiting with bees in hives. While keeping the hive in view, the penultimate section focuses on relations beyond the hive found in the cycles, durations, and disruptions of seasonality. These three explorations of temporal dynamics are not intended to convey a linear or scalar account of beekeeping – moving from intimate relations to a global debate, for example. As narrative fragments oriented around temporal experiences, each telling punctures, runs alongside, and/or interweaves among others, through practice and, as such, should be read through each other. Finally, the conclusion reflects upon what insights might be gained through more-than-human time telling.

Section snippets

Thinking toward multispecies time tellings

Recent social studies of beekeeping offer important insights into the complexities of the practice (Adams, 2018, Moore and Kosut, 2013, Phillips, 2014) and the politics of knowledge involved in related ecological damage and extinctions (Lezaun, 2011, Lehébel-Péron et al., 2016, Maderson and Wynne-Jones, 2016, Watson and Stallins, 2016). There are also indications of how important temporalities can be in beekeeping. In their account of urban beekeeping in New York, Moore and Kosut (2013, 92)

Exploring Australian beekeeping

Australia provides a fascinating location for exploring beekeeping practices for several reasons, three of which are particularly relevant here. First, Australian beekeeping is experiencing a declining commercial sector with simultaneous growth in (especially urban) hobbyist numbers (ABARES, 2016). Second, there is an absence of documented mass bee losses and of Varroa destructor, a parasitic mite held at least partially responsible for world-wide bee declines and considered “the most serious

A time of crisis, or urgent mandates to ‘save the bees’

‘No bees = No food’ (see Fig. 1) declares the mudflap on the beekeeper’s truck I hop into to learn about how honeybees3 are moved in commercial production in Australia (see Phillips, 2014). At the end of my visit, which covered over 24 h together in or around that truck, I am gifted my own set. I do not own a vehicle so their intended function is lost but they

At the hive: visiting bees, coordinating rhythms

Observing. I am told over and over again that it is the key to beekeeping. Knowing when to intervene, or not. A lot of beekeeping is about timing it seems – discerning and becoming part of a shared rhythm. The best time, I have been taught, is a clear, warm, not-too-windy day. Then I still have to discern if the time is right. Watching, listening, smelling. Are the bees up for a visit? Are they calm and happy? Hungry, queen-less, diseased? Bees signal with their flight patterns and buzzing;

Beyond the hive: learning seasonal cycles and dynamism

Attuning to the rhythms of seasonal changes, growth patterns, and circadian cycles within beekeeping was considered by beekeepers to make felt both the persistence and the dynamism of broader environments. Connecting with ecological temporalities was part of the appeal of beekeeping. Belinda, reflecting on the cycles involved in her practice, explained:

If you're in tune with your bees, you connect with this seasonal cycle of things. It's very subtle. You wouldn't necessarily notice otherwise.

Telling times, finding resonance

It may be through loss, through catastrophe-in-progress, that bees – and beekeeping – are coming into focus worldwide. Honeybees are becoming a symbol of ecological and agricultural vulnerability, and their long, intimate history with humans may make the warning they proffer of shared, troubled futures take hold in ways other crises would not. There is a risk that care for, about, with honeybees might obscure other creatures and worlds worthy of consideration; however, their figuration as omen

Acknowledgements

My deepest thanks to all the beekeepers and bees who shared their times and places with me for this research. My gratitude also to the special issue editors for the invitation to join the publication, and the participants in the ‘Rethinking Time and Temporality’ workshop for thoughtful, provocative discussions about time. Final thanks to Lesley Head, David Bissell, the anonymous reviewers, and the handling editor for offering constructive comments about the thinking and writing of this article.

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    Submission declaration: This article has not been published previously, is not under consideration for publication elsewhere, and its publication is approved by the author. The research occurred under ethical approvals from the University of Wollongong, Western Sydney University, and University of Melbourne.

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