Lessons from the Mediterranean: What Kiwi Beekeepers Can Learn from Italy’s Battle for Sustainability

As the New Zealand beekeeping industry braces for future challenges: climate instability, competition, and consumer scrutiny, etc, we’d be wise to look beyond our shores for insight. Italy, with its deep-rooted beekeeping culture, is navigating many of the same storms we face. Their grassroots and institutional responses offer powerful lessons for Aotearoa’s beekeepers.

Climate Change Calls for Innovation

Italian beekeepers report increasing threats from erratic weather, declining forage, and weakened colonies - sound familiar? Their answer? Collaborations with universities to develop innovative hive management strategies and more precise monitoring of bee health. NZ beekeepers could benefit from similar partnerships, particularly as our springs get wetter and summers hotter.

Sustainability Is Not Just Buzzwords

While Italian professionals were slower to adopt climate-conscious practices, amateur beekeepers showed high sensitivity to biodiversity and sustainability. In New Zealand, where hobbyists make up a large share of the industry, there's huge potential to lead with bottom-up, values-driven change: replanting native flora, reducing chemical use, and caring for bees as ecological sentinels.

Traceability and Trust

Italy is battling honey fraud and consumer distrust - issues we can’t ignore here. Their associations are pushing for better labeling, stronger import controls, and local certification schemes. For Kiwi producers, building traceability into packaging and using storytelling around region, floral source, and sustainability could be powerful tools for differentiation in both local and export markets.

Associations Matter

Italian beekeeper associations provide technical support, training, and policy advocacy, acting as a bridge between practitioners and the government. While NZ has excellent regional clubs, it lacks an effective national body representing commercial and hobby beekeepers, honey packers, and exporters. There is a sorrow need for a united and financially viable national body that represents the entire apiculture industry, and it can strengthen coordination, especially when it comes to lobbying for supporting local R&D programmes, providing up to date industry and market information, protecting Mānuka honey as a NZ taonga, better pesticide regulation, and improving bee health, just to mention a few.

Consumer Education Works

Italy’s success in promoting honey through school programs, interactive tastings, and storytelling can be replicated here. The average Kiwi shopper still often sees honey as "just honey." It’s time to change that narrative. Traceability, purity, and bioactivity - especially for Mānuka - deserve better explanation and marketing. Establishing a single grading system and geographical origin labeling that protects the authenticity and quality of Mānuka would improve customers’ trust and market demand.

Takeaways for NZ Beekeepers:

• Actively and financially support the establishment and effective operation of a unified industry body that guides sustainability policies and practices.

• Collaborate with research institutions to pilot climate-adaptive hive practices.

• Use your labels and websites to tell the story of your land, bees, and methods.

• Push for stronger traceability and import regulations through your associations.

• Embrace sustainability as a practical and marketable advantage.

• Educate your consumers—and even your local school—about why your honey matters.

  
  

In a shrinking, warming world, adaptation will be the secret to survival. Italy’s beekeepers offer us a clear signal: sustainability isn’t optional - it’s the future. Let’s start shaping it now.

Inspired by insights from: Mastromonaco et al. (2025), “Challenges and Opportunities of Sustainability, Certifications and Traceability in the Italian Beekeeping Sector,” AIMS

Agriculture and Food. https://www.aimspress.com/aimspress-data/aimsagri/2025/2/PDF/agrfood-10-02-016.pdf