ABSTRACT
The local food movement has emerged in recent decades as a response to climate change and industrial agriculture in which people seek to improve their health and respond to environmental, social, and economic issues by taking back control of their food sources. Urban beekeeping is part of this sustainable food movement; spurred on by global threats to bee populations, there has been an escalation in beekeeping as a hobby. However, while much has been written on peoples’ desire to reconnect to their food supply and relocating this production to the city, little literature has explored the role of the senses in guiding this shift. Recognising cities as places of both refuge and conflict, new understandings are required to navigate increased human/nonhuman proximities. This article argues that the senses offer an important source of knowledge to help ease tensions between the binaries of city/country, consumption/production, and human/nonhuman, offering a pathway to reconnect to place and to both human and nonhuman ‘others’. By suggesting we learn to listen to bees and to each other, this chapter advocates for a more-than-human methodology of the senses towards creating convivial, multispecies cities.
