Urban beekeepers and local councils in Aotearoa, New Zealand: Honeybees are valuable allies in achieving the sustainable development goals

Abstract

Beekeeping is a popular hobby, and urban beekeepers make up the largest number of beekeepers in Aotearoa, New Zealand. The ease of purchasing beehives, together with New Zealander’s positive attitude toward honeybees has meant that hobbyist beekeeper numbers have steadily increased since 2012. The impact of the increasing numbers of urban beehives has meant Aotearoa, New Zealand’s local councils, have been forced to deal with honeybees and, ultimately, with urban beekeepers. This has, in some instances, led to nonsensical bylaws that the urban beekeepers have largely ignored. However, this article will demonstrate that local councils and, by inference, urban planners should take an alternative approach to urban beekeeping only because urban beekeeping leads to better sustainability outcomes. This article will show how urban beehives and beekeeping link well to the Sustainable Development Goals and provide local councils and urban planners with justifications to engage with urban beekeepers. Finally, this article states that local councils should stop treating honeybees as farm livestock and instead treat them as valuable pollinators and the indicator species that they are.