Paper short abstract:

Increasing rates of disease in bee populations means that there is increasing pressure to stop importing bees, and to breed indigenous bees. What are the biopolitics of these efforts to control bee populations?

Paper long abstract:

What is at stake in the import and export of bees? The increasing incidence of disease in bee colonies in the UK means that commercial beekeepers must rely on imported honeybees in order to keep their businesses afloat. Likewise soft fruit farmers import commercially-bred bumblebees to pollinate soft fruit efficiently. These immigrant bees do not travel alone - but reputedly threaten local bee populations with the disease-causing microbes that they carry with them. Some beekeepers wish to close our borders to bees, and are calling for import restrictions. Simultaneously there is increasing interest in breeding pure strains of indigenous bee, such as the Scottish Black Bee. In this paper I interrogate the politics of bee breeding and bee imports. To what extent is the interest in maintaining the purity of indigenous bees created by the fear of contagion associated with immigrant bees? What are the ethics and biopolitics of these efforts to control bee populations?