What fascinates people about beekeeping? What is their attitude towards bees and how does this relate to their own beekeeping practice? Regardless of whether beekeeping is more paternalistic and control-oriented or more permissive and bee-centered: Beekeepers' diverse approaches to beekeeping are reflected in the skills they apply, the knowledge they seek and their preferred problem-solving strategies. The basic attitudes materialize in the nature of General Tools and beehives. Fueled by human wonder and doubt, a diversity in beekeeping emerged that could not be taken for granted, but also led to serious problems. Using ethnographic examples from Malta, Laos, New Zealand, France and Germany, different ways of keeping bees are presented, which were gathered during many years of practice-oriented research in small and large beekeeping businesses, in bee science and in the agricultural industry.

Based on the question of how the contemporary problems of beekeeping have arisen, the author presents a concrete proposal for the beekeeping of the future with a draft concept for beekeeping based on the model of solidarity agriculture.