Urban Beekeepers and Local Councils in Aotearoa, New Zealand

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 Zealanders’ 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

Aotearoa · Economic growth · Economics · Environmental planning · Geography · Political science · Sustainable development · Animal and Plant Science Education · Insect and Pesticide Research · Law · Plant and animal studies

• Indigenous perspectives of ecosystem-based management and co-governance in the Pacific Northwest

  Open Access•Sarah-Jane Tiakiwai, Jonathan Timatanga Kilgour et al.•AlterNative An International…•2017

  Añadir item

• Viewpoint

  Open Access•B E Singleton•Cities•2023

  Añadir item

• The seven lamps of planning for biodiversity in the city

  Open Access•Kirsten M Parris, Marco Amati et al.•Cities•2018

  Añadir item

• Factors determining online sustainability reporting by local governments

  Open Access•Francisco José Alcaraz-Quiles, Andrés Navarro Galera et al.•International Review of…•2015

  Añadir item

• Sustainability reporting by Australian local government authorities

  Md Moazzem Hossain•Local Government Studies•2018

  Añadir item