Résumé
The closest environment for the bees, the beehive, is scarcely focusedbecause among the scientific community, researchers interested in apidologyare mainly related to biology, studying honeybees as individuals or socialgroups and their environment, but lack the specific skills in materials science(international working groups COLOSS - Prevention of honey bee COlonyLOSSes). However, among the scientific community, the influence of the hiveand its different characteristics (material of construction, form, width of wall) isof no doubt regarding the impact of preservative treatments applied to thewooden hives, the role of the material on the inner thermoregulation, the localknowledge from traditional practices of beekeeping (Kalnins and Detroy 1984,Kalnins and Erickson 1986, Dodologlu et al. 2004, Lensky 1964, Lehebel-Peron 2014).Our work in anthropology of beekeeping is to investigate the relationshipbetween “human users of bees” (beehives suppliers, beehives manufacturersand beekeepers) and the third party, the beehive. First interviews haverevealed what we called the “beekeeper paradox”. Beekeepers rely on theirbeehive suppliers even if they are aware that the choice of building material forthe beehives is driven by the production strategy to reduce the productioncosts (which has been lately in low-wages countries) making the beehive to bea simple box made from the poorest wood quality disposable after a couple ofyears compared to the “one-life” product that it used to be. The interests of thematerial for the bees is not considered at all.An ongoing survey is aimed at checking this assumption on a larger sample.First results are expected for the fall 2017.