A Country of 2 Million is the World Leader in Beekeeping and Protecting Pollinators
Slovenia is home to the highest per capita number of beekeepers in Europe. Out of a population of 2 million, 11,000 keep bees.
This small Eastern European country leads the EU in good pollinator policy, conducting research through the vast beekeeping network, creating legislation or best practices, and watching them spread from country to country like a bumblebee flitting between flowers.
Explained by Kaja Šeruga, a Slovenian writer published at Reasons to be Cheerful, the success of the country’s beekeeping exploits is down to there being only one national beekeepers union.
This monopoly remains in constant contact with the Ministry of Agriculture and allows bees and wild pollinators alike to receive protections fast if threats are identified.
Šeruga details how it was the Slovenian Beekeepers Association that first linked the pesticidal compounds neonicotinoids to pollinator die-offs in 2011. It didn’t even take a year for the Association’s recommendations to be adopted by the Ministry, and for a state-wide ban on this neurotoxic pesticide to come into effect—before being adopted by the whole of the EU seven years later.
Šeruga further explains how the national pastime and enterprise of beekeeping makes it easy to change people’s attitudes around how pollinators are treated. Slovenia’s capital of Ljubljana was the founding city in the EU’s Bee Path Cities Network, which now contains cities in Portugal, Poland, Romania, Greece, and Italy.
Key to this initiative that seeks to make room in urban areas for pollinator species including but not limited to bees is the city-wide practice of “delayed mowing.” With 350 beekeepers within the city limits, in 2020, the city authorities responsible for public grassy areas decided they would not conduct any mowing until June as a way of ensuring that bees and other pollinators coming out of winter inactivity can gorge on the nectar of wild flowers like dandelion.
Now, spokesmen at the Department for Environmental Protection say they’re more likely to receive photos from concerned citizens if a park or median strip has been mowed prematurely, than if the grass has taken on a wild and unkempt appearance.
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Slovenia has its own native honey bee species, called the Carniolan, and the nation supplied the Hapsburg monarchy with its first royal beekeeping coach. It holds multiple senior positions at the International Federation of Beekeepers, known also as Apimundia, and is generally considered a world leader in the field.
It should come as no surprise then that May 20th, World Bee Day, was first proposed by Slovenians.
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“Beekeepers have the problem that the environment is changing in ways that aren’t friendly to bees and other pollinators,” Peter Kozmus, vice-president of Apimundia, told Šeruga. “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.”
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