<<Another invasive species that causes huge problems where it chokes rivers is Himalayan Water Balsam - our local rivers are choked with it - and it was a local, well-respected beekeeper (now deceased) who put it there!>>

My next writing project for a beek magazine concerns beekeeping ethics. Like many if not most matters related to ethics, there’s no black and white solution to an ethical dilemma, and one must be careful not to rush to judgement. I’m mostly interested in the ethical aspects of beekeeper relations among one another and with the general public. Some examples of ethical questions (dilemmas?) are:

1. Is it ethical for a beekeeper to breach a legal quarantine and introduce a pathogen or pest to a hb stock that was previously free of them? Here, the law has encoded the ethics more or less; the law says it’s wrong and you will be negatively sanctioned if you breach a legal quarantine.  

However, what about cases where ethics are not encoded in law?

2. Is it ethical for a migratory beekeeper to overwinter 200 colonies immediately adjacent to an existing apiary owned by a local beekeeper without permission or even consultation?  It’s legal, but is it ethical?

And then there’s environmental ethics.

3. Is it ethical for beekeepers to introduce hb populations, effectively as an exotic species, to regions that previously did not have them, or to boost hb populations in a region such that there is spillover of exotic pathogens and pests to native pollinators, and where baseline data regarding native pollinator distribution, abundance and pathogen profiles are lacking?

4. Is it ethical for beekeepers to wilfully introduce exotic, highly invasive floral species to a region without regard for the negative consequences for existing plant communities, the various species dependent upon these communities, without regard for the social-economic costs related to weed management, etc., etc.?

There’s certainly some old-fashioned sociology in all this related to how communities are constituted, normative behaviour and deviance, but I intend to consult an ethicist as I go forward with this project because ethicists have useful methodologies for the consideration of ethical dilemmas. 

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html