Hi all
In my opinion, categorizing honey bees as livestock is a significant blunder, which was orchestrated by people who have no real grasp of beekeeping. Two years ago, I published an article on "Natural Beekeeping" in the ABJ. Beekeeping was always a pursuit of naturalists, until it was commercialized by Americans in the late 1800s. The fact that beekeeping is a commercial enterprise for many does not negate the fact that 99% of all beekeepers are amateurs. Try not to paint with too broad a brush.

From my article:

Many people who already have a deep interest in nature and the natural world are drawn to bee keeping and the study of honey bees. Edwin Way Teale was such a one. His first book "Grassroots Jungle" contained photographs of insects taken on a piece of land near his home in Long Island, NY. His second book, "The Golden Throng ," published in 1940, was about honey bees. In 1946 he wrote an introduction to a reprinting of Henry David Thoreau's "Walden ." Thoreau was no beekeeper, but he did have some interesting things to say about it: 

There are certain pursuits which, if not wholly poetic and true, do at least suggest a nobler and finer relation to nature than we know. The keeping of bees, for instance, is a very slight interference. It is like directing the sun beams. All nations, from the remotest antiquity, have thus fingered nature. There are Hymettus and Hybla , and how many bee -renowned spots beside? There is nothing gross in the idea of these little herds,- their hum like the faintest low of kine in the meads (Thoreau, 1843).

Borst, PL (2016) A look at natural beekeeping. American Bee Journal 156(7):811-814

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