Vocational Education and Training (VET) is recognised as a key to social, ecological and economic transformation, pertinent given the urgency for societies to transition to more socially just and environmentally sustainable forms of human development, what has been termed a “just transition”. As such, a key policy aspiration is to improve the relevance of VET to support individuals and communities and meet the anticipated demands of diverse stakeholder groups through these transitions. In the Aotearoa New Zealand VET context, these principles have been reflected in the recent Reform of Vocational Education (RoVE) and signalled in the Government’s social development and climate response policies. Yet VET research is replete with enduring examples of VET’s failures based on a narrow conception of training people for skills for work rather than how VET contributes to the full range of human capabilities and flourishing. Therefore, a reimagining of VET is required however what this might look like is theoretically under development while the narrow conceptions endure. Contributing to this reimagining, this investigation argued a practice-theoretical approach to VET research using the Theory of Practice Architectures provides opportunities to explore the conditions of possibility inherent in vocational practices as the sites where transformations occur. To achieve this, a qualitative, ethnographic case study of the vocation of beekeeping in a workand study-based context was undertaken. Using a hybrid approach to participant observation/observant participation, unstructured interviews and a review of historical materials on beekeeping, a complex array of beekeeping practices was generated and thematised. This provided the empirical resources to explore the rich complexity of beekeeping practices, to identify notions of relevance from these perspectives of practice, and analyse the symbiosis or tensions between them against a review of New Zealand’s current suite of apiculture qualifications and programmes as a part of New Zealand’s recent reforms and aspirations to meet just transitions objectives through a relevant VET system. The findings located tensions between the strategic industry focuses and projects of production in the qualifications against the affective dimensions and projects of productivity for care that describes the unique beekeeping practice traditions of human-bee relations. This further implicated how the qualifications and programmes were relevant to the needs of learners and employers and illuminated why disparate experiences between training and work manifest. Further, these tensions highlighted how VET can change the practice landscape of beekeeping practices in ways that consolidate this industry focus. However, by making these tensions visible, transformative possibilities inherent in new meanings of VET and the traditions of vocational practices themselves were identified. This supports the use of a practice-theoretical approach to contribute to a range of theoretical, strategic and practical endeavours in VET research, policy and practice, further backgrounding opportunities for practice-based research to define transformational trajectories for vocational practices and VET moving forward.