Abstract
Here we highlight two ontologically different modes of care and management of endemic stingless bees in Australia. While Indigenous Yolngu and backyard beekeepers both engage in caring for stingless bees, neither way of living with bees would classically be defined as ‘domestication’, yet bees are encompassed within the ‘home’, or domus. This requires a different perspective in relation to the kinds of multispecies connections between humans and other beings. We propose that the key difference between Aboriginal Australians hunting for sugarbag on country and beekeeping in the backyard is in the way bee populations are maintained and in the degree of ecological separation from the surrounding environment. For Yolngu the domus is the bush. Backyard beekeeping involves modes of care that separate bees from outside predators, pests and other detrimental elements, while the Yolngu relationship with bees is primarily concerned with maintaining the integrity of the surrounding ecology, or the homeland.
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Notes
There is literature positing that the Mayans ‘semi-domesticated’ stingless bees prior to the arrival of the Spanish (Crane 1999).
According to Encyclopaedia Britannica’s ecological definition, the ‘home range’ of an animal is the spatial area where it spends its time; it is the region that encompasses all the resources the animal requires to survive and reproduce (http://www.britannica.com/science/home-range, accessed 27 June 2017).
Tim Ingold makes a distinction between a house and a home, whereby the physical structure itself is the house (or nest), while the setting it is within, where individuals dwell is the home (Ingold 2000, p. 185).
In the past in relation to Yolngu, anthropologists generally referred to clans as the relatives on the male (patrilineal) line, while women were members of neighbouring clans with each individual tied to both their father’s or mother’s country (see Keen 1995). An individual can, therefore, be attached to more than one kind of country.
It was only later that I realised that this kind of ancestral knowledge is not explained but learnt through observation and participation within ceremony, or through narrative accompanying bark paintings.
In 1974 Ian Dunlop, with accompanying film crew, filmed this ceremony in Djungguwan at Gurka’wuy (1989).
This survey suggests that the increase in numbers of backyard beekeepers may be more than the increase in respondents, as only twenty-eight of the respondents within the second survey reported having participated in the first survey.
In conservation circles this means of dispersal is still seen as problematic in that cadaghi is now spreading beyond its historic range, shading forest understories and altering forest compositions.
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Acknowledgements
Author 1 would like to thank the Yirralka Rangers for allowing her to accompany them on ranger activities within homelands across the Layhnapuy Indigenous Protected Area in northeast Arnhem Land. Their stewardship and management is crucial for caring for country. Thank you to Ian Keen for checking Yolngu terms within the manuscript. Author 2 would like to thank Tim Heard for sharing his time and extensive knowledge of stingless bees and beekeeping.
Funding
Author A’s research was funded by the College of Arts and Social Sciences, The Australian National University. Author B’s work was partly supported by the John Templeton Foundation under Grant number 57496. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation.
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Fijn, N., Baynes-Rock, M. A Social Ecology of Stingless Bees. Hum Ecol 46, 207–216 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-018-9983-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-018-9983-0