Bulgarian beekeepers staged a nationwide protest

Beekeepers from all over the country on 10^th of December staged a nationwide protest over the low level of de minimis state aid.

According to the protesters, the allocated BGN 3 and a half million are not enough to restore the bee families, because this makes BGN 5 per family of bees.

They asked for the sum to be at least BGN 40 per bee family and insisted on sustained subsidisation in the sector through direct payments.

Other measures that would help the industry are tighter controls on crop cultivation, as well as the creation of a laboratory to study bee mortality.

The Ministry of Agriculture has committed to a consultative council being set up to discuss the issues in the sector. Beekeepers have also demanded more serious control over banned pesticides used by grain producers.

Nikolai Kumenov, President of the Federation of Bulgarian Beekeepers: A badly neglected sector, unfortunately for this reason beekeepers have dropped dramatically by about 40% over the past few years. We insist that we have direct payments, like all other farmers, these direct payments should be 60 euros per bee family. There is an ordinance, which prohibits spraying plant protection products from 10.00 am to sunset, but unfortunately not all farmers comply with this ordinance. There is no control and everybody sprays whenever and with whatever they want.