Good news in contrast with a widespread thought in recent times: Italian honey bees are in good health, and are on the increase throughout the country, even if their honey production decreases due to adverse weather conditions and climate change . In particular, 2020 beehives were registered in the last 1.950.000 census. A natural capital whose value is estimated at no less than 500 million euros, far higher than the gross salable production of the entire sector.
The announcement, on the eve of the "World Bee Day" which we celebrate on 20 May, comes from Raffaele Cirone, president of the FAI-Italian Beekeepers Federation, who underlines that the beekeepers registered in Italy are constantly increasing: around 65.000, of which at least another 10.000 are added who, especially among young people, despite the pandemic, are demonstrating the intention of approaching this farm by following the necessary training courses.
"World Bee Day - continues Cirone - is for our country the 'World Day of the Italian Bee', a subspecies of native bee that has spread throughout the planet in just over a century: a widespread, appreciated and bred bee on a planetary scale. A unique case that explains the reasons for the pride and commitment of the national beekeeping community in protecting and safeguarding this precious heritage of our biodiversity”.
But it must also be said that the critical point of Italian beekeeping, however, remains that of the production of honey, whose potential annual value is expected to be around 25.000 tons and which instead, for the past five years, has been subject to a constant reduction.
At the same time it should not be forgotten that Italian beekeeping is a fundamental sector of the agricultural sector, both for the production capacity achieved and for the pollinating function that bees perform in favor of rural, natural and urban environments".
In addition to the beekeeping value, in fact, the presence of beehives in the area generates a good 2 billion euros in the value of the production of crops of agri-food interest in Italy, to which we must add that of the ecosystemic contribution that bees guarantee with the pollination service to the biodiversity of our natural environments, estimated at 150 billion euros.
World Bee Day - recall Confagricoltura and FAI - must be an opportunity to facilitate and consolidate the role that beekeepers and farmers are the first to operate concretely every day, helping the honey bee and pollinators to find their natural place in all Italian farms, adopting compensatory measures for beekeepers so that they do not abandon this activity.
