Nuisance Against Bees

In 2007, Barry B. Benson, voiced by Jerry Seinfeld in the beloved Bee Movie, made history by arguing his rights as an insect before the New York Superior Court, claiming that honey industry actors conspired to defraud Benson’s certified class, “all bees of the world.” Today, in real-world combined efforts among biologists, lawyers, and the bees they seek to protect, the stingless bees of Peru have the opportunity to follow in Barry’s illustrious footsteps, symbolizing an important shift away from an anthropocentric legal practice and toward one of biocentrism.

In Satipo, Peru, the struggle to grant rights to a culturally and ecologically integral species of stingless bees began in 2020, when Rosa Vásquez Espinoza conducted research into the effects of the bees’ honey on COVID-19 symptoms. Her time with the indigenous communities who care for the bees taught her the dire nature of the bees’ disappearance and eventually led her to bring the Earth Law Center (ELC) into the fight to protect them.

In January 2025, ELC’s lobbying efforts led to an amendment to a Peruvian national law that extended existing protections for insects to stingless bees. Following this victory, ELC drafted a local ordinance and conducted workshops with indigenous communities, whose insights ultimately shaped the document’s final language. In October 2025, the bees’ monumental victory arrived as the Municipality of Satipo passed this ordinance granting the stingless bees “intrinsic rights…to exist, to maintain healthy populations, to live in a healthy environment, to conserve and regenerate their habitat.”

Throughout the fight to obtain these rights, members of the community frequently pointed to the effects of mining, land use, and climate change as causes for the stingless bees’ disappearance. Now that the bees have the authority to protect their rights, one must ask what legal actions representatives of the bees could realistically take to hold a third party, like a logging company, accountable.

As Peruvian courts grapple with this question, they may look toward the American nuisance doctrine for direction, which often addresses comparable disputes. In Sans v. Ramsey Golf & Country Club, Inc., a family brought a nuisance claim against a golf course that created a hole along the border of the family’s property. The family claimed that the players’ daily presence, which entailed loud conversations, trespass onto the family’s property, and violence against the family dog, constituted nuisance liability. The court held the golf course liable for nuisance, ordering that the hole be moved, and stating that, in essence, nuisance is an “unreasonable interference with the use and enjoyment of land” and that its adjudication process must recognize the reciprocal rights of each owner and balance their conflicting interests. Weighing the course’s right to profit from its privately managed business against the family’s right to appreciate the comfort of a family home, the court found that the golfers’ presence had unreasonably interfered with the family’s use and enjoyment of their property.

The Sans case provides insight into the stingless bees question because the Satipo ordinance seemingly grants the bees an indefinite and complete control over their habitat and, consequently, the right to use and enjoy their “property.” The Sans nuisance doctrine posits that another’s actions that unreasonably interfere with one’s right to use and enjoy their property can be held liable for nuisance. Without an objective measure for defining a bee’s enjoyment of property, it is assumed from the ordinance’s language that a bee would use and enjoy its property by existing, maintaining a healthy population, and living in a healthy environment. Identifying whether third-party actions unreasonably interfere with the bees’ use and enjoyment of their property is more difficult. Nevertheless, should a logging company or an agricultural operation cut down trees or spray pesticides, and such actions result in harm to the habitat or bees themselves, a court weighing the reasonableness of the right to use land for economic profit and the right to keep oneself alive, could certainly find that those actions constituted unreasonable interference, and therefore, nuisance liability. A Peruvian court may then, similar to the Sans court, order these companies to halt or relocate their operations.

The passing of the Satipo ordinance is a significant advancement for biocentric lawyering and, more so, for the conservation of bees. The ordinance represents hope that bees’ protection may no longer be predicated on converging human interests. If international legislative bodies could adopt the substance of the Satipo ordinance, it could make cases like Barry B. Benson’s inevitable realities and offer a way to hold companies that place bees and humans alike at risk due to environmental degradation accountable, even when humans are not directly injured.

Ethan Johnson is a JD candidate at American University Washington College of Law, whose environmental interests stem from his Master’s research at the London School of Economics.

Image: Floro Ortiz Contreras, Trigona pallens 195713982.