BeeLife is a close-knit family of experts working together like a well-oiled bee colony focused on a common goal: ensuring a brighter future for bees and pollinators, but also for European citizens.
BeeLife and its members strive to protect pollinators, biodiversity and honey production in a constant synergy of actions and information sharing. An impressive work that requires the proper time to celebrate our broad family and retrace the stages of projects and advocacy programs during the annual BeeLife General Assembly.
The 2025 BeeLife General Assembly was held in Bologna. It included interactive sessions and a rich agenda, with different spokespersons and stakeholders. BeeLife also mentioned new collaboration opportunities, such as Via Campesina, which is active on human rights, farming on a human scale and the preservation of agroecology for the NGT file, research projects (Valor and Butterfly) and representatives of the European Commission, who put us up-to-speed on the actions promoted at the EU level.
For the BeeLife team and members, it was a precious moment to see each other, share experiences, objectives and concerns and stimulate interactions among different countries to minimise the negative human impact on the environment due to unconscious decisions.
A mission that will be reached with the help of BeeLife full members and supporter members.
We recap the key points discussed during the Assembly here below:
2024 milestones
Bee theNet project, Pollinator Hub implementation, a Welcome Pack for new MEPs, the Bee-coherent Tool to point out the MEPs with a pollinators friendly approach during the past years, a renovated website and new brand guidelines are just some of the total projects that have involved BeeLife.
CAP
The evolution of CAP has driven a great effort to defend and save the green elements of the Policy. The recent attack on the Green Deal program moved BeeLife and 229 other organisations to express concerns and reasons in an Open letter for the new AGRI commissioner, Christophe Hansen.
Chemical Regulation
BeeLife is on the first line in advocacy engagement for a sustainable use of pesticides, biocides and veterinary medicines, underlining the threat of toxic chemicals to nature, pollinators, farmers, beekeepers, and final consumers. In this scenario, collaboration with EFSA, EMA and ECHA is crucial.
The impact of GMOs (and organisms derived from New Genetic Techniques)
The negotiations about the New GMOs (NGTs) regulation are ongoing in Europe. Our recommendation is the observation of the broader effects on nature. Some studies have been published, and others are ongoing to create consciousness about the possible risks to biodiversity, agriculture, people and food sovereignty. During the assembly some members expressed the necessity to create a discussion group about GMO/NGT and this was accepted: a group will be created.
Some experts and researchers were involved during the assembly, like Florian Claey and Henrike von der Decken, policy officers at the European Commission's Directorate General for the Environment and Agriculture and Rural Development, respectively, Jeroen van der Sluijs, Professor at Bergen University (Norway), Tom Breeze, researcher of the University of Reading (UK) and Danilo Marandola, researcher at CREA and involved in PAC regulation in Italy.
Interaction among wild pollinators and honey bees
The interaction between wild pollinators and honey bees highlights both groups' critical role in ensuring biodiversity and ecosystem health, emphasising the need for integrated conservation strategies and action at the landscape level to generate resources in quantity and quality.
EU Honey Platform
BeeLife is a stakeholder representing the civil society (NGO) in the European Honey Platform, engaging in technical discussions to better define and characterise honey, put in place a traceability system and add analytical methods to fight against adulteration.
By representing beekeepers and advocating for the improvement of the Honey Directive, BeeLife works to ensure the authenticity and quality of honey across Europe among different stakeholders in a delicate balance between production methods and market needs. In this scenario, BeeLife aims to strengthen the integrity and the value of European honey, to avoid unfair competition and to prevent fraudulent practices.
2025 Projects and Budget
For 2025, BeeLife confirmed its orientation to create a positive circulation of knowledge. It will use the usual scientific approach to studies, examinations, and case collections from different countries, as well as more communication effort thanks to a new cross-media plan. The members' operational engagement is relevant to make this strategy stronger and more viral.Also, Pesticide Action Week in March and Pollinator Week Event in May are essential actions in the current year's plan.
For members agendaWe invite you to follow subsequent communications carefully, bearing in mind:
the possibility of being part of the Civil Groups discussion organised by DG AGRI,
the opportunity to organise a new Vespids webinar,
the importance of collecting and translating in English the required information to build a real-cases database about legal disputes and concerns on pollinators' interactions,
the conditions behind Honey Platform evolution,
the recommendation is to give more relevance to common projects sharing information, articles and social posts promoted by BeeLife.
Lasse Hellander, President of BeeLife, highlighted: “It is great to see the outstanding participation of colleagues from the national and regional members. The best asset of BeeLife is the compromise of its members and team, building capacity to protect bees, pollinators and the future of our children. We are happy that scientists and decision-makers keep in contact with the field observations and experiences, being able to answer concrete society needs, and we are proud of the collaboration among EU researchers, members and our team to keep a science-driven approach, which enables us to navigate the complex and challenging scenarios with clarity and precision.”
For any further information, please write to: comms@bee-life.eu