Sequential Relationship between Profitability and Sustainability: The Case of Migratory Beekeeping

Luciano Pilati and Mario Prestamburgo
Additional contact information
Luciano Pilati: Department of Economics and Management, University of Trento, Via Inama 5, 38100 Trento, Italy
Mario Prestamburgo: Department of Economic Sciences, Business, Mathematics and Statistics, University of Trieste, Via Valerio 4/1, 34127 Trieste, Italy

Sustainability, 2016, vol. 8, issue 1, 1-8

Abstract: When beekeeping is managed on a migratory basis, the bee colony produces physical outputs (honey) and pollination services on a sequence of forage sites. Forage sites are competitors if their flowering periods overlap, and are complementary otherwise. Viable sequences consist only of complementary forage sites. A part of the bee colony’s production time is spent on each forage site in the period when the crop or wild vegetation covering it is in flower. The total period covered by the sequence of sites, including the base site, must be equal to or less than the duration (365 days) of the bee colony’s annual biological cycle. The migratory beekeeper draws up viable sequences of forage sites and calculates their profitability levels. Variations in the profitability of forage sites which alter the composition of the sequence, affecting provision of the non-marketed ecosystem pollination services, impact the biodiversity of the pollinated plants with trickle-down effects on sustainability. In the case of migratory beekeeping, there is, therefore, a sequential relationship between profitability and sustainability.

Keywords: migratory beekeeping; forage sites; sequential output production; ecosystem pollination services; modelling profitability and sustainability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/8/1/94/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/8/1/94/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:8:y:2016:i:1:p:94-:d:62475

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().