The B-THENET project is profoundly honoured to announce it has received the prestigious Global Technical Recognition of Good Practices and Innovations in Sustainable Livestock Transformation, One Health, Animal Health and Reference Centres from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).

B-THENET earned this top recognition for its innovative bottom-up methodology and the creation of an open-access dataset of Best Beekeeping Practices hosted on the B-THENET Digital Platform, and its ready-to-launch AI integration for global scalability.

This success highlights the project’s tangible impact in:

• Boosting economic efficiency and resilience for beekeepers.
• Promoting environmental sustainability through healthier bee populations.
• Fostering trust and collaboration across the sector.
• Strengthening governance via improved data management.

The ceremony took place in Rome (IT) on the 15th of October 2025. To know more about the event: LINK.

Dr. Giovanni Formato IZSLT, B-THENET Coordinator, and Dr. Thanawat Tiensin, Assistant Director-General and Director of the Animal Production and Health Division (NSA) of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).

The National B-THENET Centres, organise easily accessible and free-of-charge training events for beekeepers, advisors, and all interested stakeholders, in their national language. Please visit the B-THENET Events Page for the training events scheduled in each country.

Beekeeping practices are developed over three years, each year focusing on different topics in partner countries: Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Poland, Slovakia, Spain, and Sweden.

These practices are continuously published on the B-THENET Platform. The topics are as follows:

• Apiary Set-up/Management, Varroosis (already published)
• Colony Set-up and Daily Management/Maintenance, American Foulbrood (to be published in January 2025)
• Record-keeping, Bee Feeding and Watering, European Foulbrood (to be published in October 2025)
• Routine (Preventive) Hygiene Practices, Nosemosis, Small Hive Beetle, and Vespa velutina (to be published in 2026)

As with every round, for our upcoming October 2025 publications on Record-keeping, Bee Feeding and Watering, and European Foulbrood, we’ve created an online survey. We would be grateful for your input.

Let’s build the B-THENET Community further to create a more thriving apiculture sector!

B-THENET is the first EU-wide network for sustainable beekeeping, providing EU beekeepers and advisors with practical beekeeping solutions and training, co-developed with practising beekeepers and tailored to the respective country. The network includes 18 entities from the apiculture sector, including beekeepers’ associations, research institutes, and universities. We operate 13 National B-THENET Centres across Europe and 3 International Centres to foster the improvement of the beekeeping sector both at national and transnational levels.

Author: Lauriane Mariame IZSLT

B-THENET is the EU thematic network for sustainable beekeeping. Its mission is to collect Best Beekeeping Practices and innovations and share them with  EU beekeepers, advisors, and other stakeholders on the first digital platform for European beekeepers, to modernise apiculture and foster a resilient and more competitive sector.  

With this objective in mind, a survey was created to gather valuable information on good beekeeping practices and innovations and discuss them among beekeepers, advisors, and other stakeholders in languages through our digital platforms.

Each year, we target different beekeeping themes. For 2024, Colony set-up and daily management/maintenance as well as American foulbrood will be the focus of the project.

This survey is part of the project’s bottom-up approach and is meant to rate the most relevant practices and innovations within these categories.

Your participation in the survey will support the project, and therefore it is greatly appreciated. The survey can be accessed by clicking the links below.

15 languages are available! Please use the language of your choice from the links below.