Paper short abstract:

Listening to the bees as sentinels of Climate Change. The interspecies perspective of beekeepers could allow to create forms of collaborative knowledge, and to imagine strategies for climate crisis adaptation and to face desertification.

Paper long abstract:

Bees can be considered as sentinels (KECK 2013) of environmental and social changes.

Their health and behaviours, if interpreted through the beekeeper's intuitive sensitivity (INGOLD 2000), can deliver informations about the ecosystem and on the very nature of the relationships that constitute it: an interweaving of human and non-human actions which results in a constant process of co-creation of worlds (TSING 2015).

In the last years beekeeping has been facing a tragic crisis, due, among other factors, to the lack of

nectar.

In this proposal, which is the result of a two-years field work, the relationship between soil microorganisms,

water, the grass cover of the soil, the health of plants and pollinating insects is investigated.

According to some beekeepers, the reasons for the disappearance of the nectar are to be found in the

desertification process which is advancing in our latitudes, a phenomenon favoured by agricultural

and economic practices which see each element of the territory as alienated from the others.

Following their holistic and ecosophical (GUATTARI 1989) perspective, preserving the soil's ability to retain water and favouring the grassing and the survival of all microorganisms inhabiting it means helping plants to secrete nectar and fight the phenomenon of desertification. By listening to the voice of sentinels of sentinels such as beekeepers, who are actors of a privileged relationship with non-human beings, it is possible to imagine strategies for resilience and mitigation

of the climate crisis.