How a Nation of Beekeepers Protects Pollinators

Beekeeping has been a way of life for Peter Kozmus since he was 14 years old. He had been part of a beekeeping club at school, and when his mentor decided to retire and sell his bee colonies, he jumped at the opportunity. “My dad was a bit surprised,” he laughs, “but luckily he made it possible for me to set up the hive and I’ve been a beekeeper ever since.” Today, Dr. Kozmus is a world-renowned beekeeping expert, vice president of the International Federation of Beekeepers’ Associations Apimondia, head of the breeding program at Slovenian Beekeepers’ Association and what can be best described as a bee diplomat, advocating for bees at home and abroad.

It’s a career path that only really makes sense in Slovenia, a Central European country of two million inhabitants, over 11,000 of whom are beekeepers — the highest amount per capita in Europe. With its own indigenous Carniolan honey bee and over 230 years of beekeeping tradition — Anton Janša, the first beekeeping teacher at the Habsburg court, is considered a pioneer of modern beekeeping — Slovenia is a world leader in the field.

“Being a small country can be a benefit, because we only have one national beekeepers’ association,” explains Dr. Kozmus, who also serves as chair of the Beekeeping Council at the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Food. “It makes our relationship with the Ministry a lot more straightforward.” The Slovenian Beekeepers’ Association showed its influence in 2011, when its members started reporting mass bee die-offs and expressed suspicions that neonicotinoids, a class of neurotoxic pesticides that are chemically similar to nicotine, were to blame. The association urged the Ministry of Agriculture to take action, and that same year Slovenia became one of the first European countries to ban their use. As evidence mounted on the negative impact of neonicotinoid pesticides on bees, an EU-wide ban followed in 2018.

World Bee Day, which has been celebrated on May 20 since 2018, was also initiated by Slovenia as a way to educate the global public and mobilize support. As Dr. Kozmus explains, “Beekeepers have the problem that the environment is changing in ways that aren’t friendly to bees and other pollinators. We can solve some of these problems ourselves, but for others we need help, and a World Bee Day seemed like the best opportunity and tool to get that.” This year World Bee Day focused on educating young people, which has long been a theme in Slovenia: A third of primary schools have beekeeping clubs like the one that inspired Dr. Kozmus, with over 2,000 children attending this year, and since 2018 beekeeping has also been an elective subject in the national primary school curriculum.