Apimondia 2025

September 2025 saw the global beekeeping community converge in Copenhagen for Apimondia 2025, the world’s foremost apicultural congress. Here’s what it is, the highlights from this year’s gathering, and exactly how we at Brecon Beecombs are integrating the best ideas into our hives, our honey, our apitherapy development, and our guest experiences in the Brecon Beacons.

Bees Without Borders: A Global Congress with Local Impact

At Brecon Beecombs, our work is rooted in the wild hedgerows and flower-rich lanes of the Brecon Beacons (Bannau Brycheiniog). But the challenges and opportunities shaping beekeeping today are global. That’s why we track—and participate in—the conversations at Apimondia: the International Federation of Beekeepers’ Associations. Every two years, Apimondia convenes a world congress where science, practice, policy, technology, and trade meet for a heady, honey-scented exchange of ideas.

This year’s congress took place in Copenhagen (23–27 September 2025) at the Bella Center, Scandinavia’s largest events venue, with a sprawling exhibition known as the ApiEXPO. The programme ranged from bee health and pollination ecology to apitherapy, equipment innovation, market economics, and sustainability. The famed Global Honey Bar showcased an extraordinary spectrum of honeys—an edible masterclass in terroir and floral diversity.

What Is Apimondia?

Apimondia is the umbrella body that brings together beekeepers’ associations and related apicultural organisations worldwide. Its mission is to foster scientific exchange, share best practices, and strengthen the social, ecological and economic contributions of beekeeping. Through scientific commissions—including Bee Health, Apitherapy, Beekeeping Technology & Quality, Pollination & Bee Flora, Economy, and Rural Development—Apimondia works across research, education, and policy to support both professional and hobbyist beekeepers.

The Apimondia Congress is a biennial summit featuring lectures, workshops, round tables, technical tours, trade exhibitions, and global networking. For us at Brecon Beecombs, the congress serves as a pulse check on the latest research and innovations, and a practical compass for our own apiary, education, and apitherapy development in Wales.

Apimondia 2025 at a Glance

• Where & When: Copenhagen, Denmark — 23–27 September 2025 (Bella Center).
• Exhibition: ApiEXPO in Hall D, with a footprint of over 7,000 m² showcasing equipment, software, and services from around the world.
• Global Honey Bar: A multi-day tasting area celebrating honey diversity from dozens of countries.
• World Beekeeping Awards: Celebrating innovation and excellence across multiple categories, with an increased focus on integrity and quality.

Beyond the headline items, the atmosphere could be summed up in three words: unity, knowledge sharing, and purity—a nod to the hosts’ vision: “Showcasing pure apiary products! Unity and knowledge sharing. Together, we make the world bloom.” It’s a spirit we share at Brecon Beecombs: practical, evidence-led, and rooted in care for bees, people, and landscapes.

Key Themes from the Congress

1) Bee Health, Disease & Biosecurity

From varroa and virus dynamics to early-warning diagnostics and breeding for resilience, bee health remains the foundation of sustainable apiculture. Sessions explored microbial ecology, pathogen interactions, and best-practice protocols for prevention and response.

2) Pollination, Flora & Landscape Ecology

Delegates examined the interplay between managed honey bees and wild pollinators, the role of hedgerows and wildflower corridors, and the impact of land-use change. The goal: landscapes that feed bees through the seasons, while protecting biodiversity.

3) Smart Beekeeping & Sensor Technology

Precision beekeeping is coming into its own. Hive scales, temperature and humidity loggers, acoustic sensors, and remote dashboards are helping beekeepers detect stress earlier, fine-tune interventions, and gather better data on nectar flows and colony performance.

4) Apitherapy & Bee Products

Honey, propolis, royal jelly, bee venom, beeswax and pollen were explored across quality standards, safety, and evidence-based applications in wellness and complementary health. For us, this directly informs the development of apitherapy opportunities at Brecon Beecombs.

5) Markets, Standards & Integrity

Honey authenticity and market transparency were front and centre. Conversations around testing, traceability and consumer trust are reshaping how quality is recognised and rewarded—vital for protecting both beekeepers and the public.

The Global Honey Bar & the Sensory Side of Science

One of Apimondia’s great strengths is its balance of serious science with sensory experience. The Global Honey Bar offered a rare chance to explore hundreds of honeys from across continents—each a liquid snapshot of place and flora. For beekeepers, tasting at this scale becomes a quality benchmark; for visitors, it’s pure wonder.

We’re taking inspiration from this format to expand our own guided tastings at Brecon Beecombs—connecting guests with the floral signatures of Welsh honeys, discussing responsible sourcing, and demonstrating how handling and storage can enhance purity and flavour.

Innovation on the Expo Floor

ApiEXPO brought together equipment makers, software developers, breeders, craftspeople, and packaging specialists. We saw emerging ideas in sensor design, hive materials, data analytics, queen breeding tools, mead and cosmetics equipment, and more. For a working apiary like ours, the expo serves as a discovery engine—what’s robust, what’s scalable, and what genuinely improves bee welfare and beekeeper workflow.

How Brecon Beecombs Will Put Apimondia Insights into Practice

This is where the rubber meets the road. Below we’ve outlined the five core areas we’re actively integrating at Brecon Beecombs following Apimondia 2025. These aren’t vague aspirations—they’re commitments that shape our beekeeping calendar, our guest experiences, and our product quality over the coming year.

A) Innovation, Sensors & Practical Trials

We are planning to install a precision beekeeping toolkit across selected hives in 2026—weight, temperature, humidity and acoustic monitoring—to complement our hands-on inspections. Our goals:

• Earlier stress detection (heat spikes, sudden weight loss, acoustic irregularities) to time inspections and interventions more precisely.
• Flow mapping with hive scales and field notes to correlate nectar flows with local flora and weather windows in the Brecon Beacons.
• Data-informed husbandry: using dashboards to compare colonies and tailor feeding, supering, and harvesting strategies.

We’ll publish short “field notes” on what genuinely works in our terrain (and what doesn’t), so fellow Welsh beekeepers can learn with us.

B) Honey Quality, Benchmarking & Tasting Experiences

Quality is our north star. Inspired by the standards and discussions at Apimondia, we’re strengthening our own quality benchmarks—from extraction hygiene and moisture control to storage conditions and lot traceability. Concretely, we’re:

• Adopting honey handling protocols aligned with international best practice for purity and flavour retention.
• Documenting lot histories (hive, harvest date, conditions) to improve traceability and storytelling.
• Hosting guided tastings at Brecon Beecombs, modelled on the Global Honey Bar concept, showcasing floral profiles across seasons.

Guests who’d like the full immersive experience can stay in our on-site cottages at The Good Life Wales, join a beekeeping taster session, or book an apitherapy-focused wellness hour during their visit.

C) Marketing with Integrity: Provenance, Transparency & Education

We’re doubling down on provenance and transparency. Following the global spotlight on honey integrity, we’ll:

• Communicate exact harvest windows, forage landscapes, and hive practices on labels and product pages.
• Expand our education content—blog posts, short videos, and in-person talks—to help customers understand what real, local honey looks and tastes like.
• Champion local Welsh honey as a product you can trace back to real hives and real people.

In short: we’ll market less like a commodity and more like an agricultural craft—because that’s what it is.

D) Partnerships, Research Links & Community Knowledge-Sharing

Apimondia is a reminder that beekeeping thrives in networks. We’re actively seeking and nurturing:

• Supplier partnerships for robust tools that survive Welsh weather and deliver genuine welfare and workflow benefits.
• Research link-ups with UK universities and extension groups to trial monitoring methods, forage mapping, and hive health protocols.
• Community exchanges—from local beekeepers’ associations to international knowledge circles—to compare notes on practical husbandry.

When appropriate, we’ll publish outcomes and open our gates for small group visits and demo days—so insights turn into shared practice.

E) Policy Awareness, Standards & Responsible Advocacy

We’ll keep abreast of evolving standards and support responsible policy that protects bees, biodiversity, and honest producers. That includes:

• Tracking guidance from Apimondia’s commissions on honey testing and authenticity.
• Advocating for pollinator-friendly land use and habitat corridors in our corner of Wales.
• Using our platform to educate consumers on why provenance and testing matter, and how to spot trustworthy honey.

We’re a small outfit with a big belief: integrity builds resilient markets and healthier ecosystems. We’ll be vocal—constructively so.

Why This Matters in the Brecon Beacons

Our bees forage the patchwork of meadows, hedges, woodland edges and upland flora that make the Brecon Beacons extraordinary. By integrating Apimondia insights into our daily practice—monitoring, husbandry, harvest, and guest education—we’re building an apiary that’s resilient, transparent, and deeply connected to place. As climate patterns shift and seasonal timing gets trickier, data and collaboration help us protect bee health while preserving flavour and character in our honey.

Experience It First-Hand: Courses, Apitherapy & Stays

Curious to taste Welsh honey side-by-side and learn how we care for our colonies? Join us for beekeeping taster sessions and apitherapy-inspired wellness experiences at Brecon Beecombs. If you’d like to make a weekend of it, our on-site holiday cottages at The Good Life Wales are right here on the farm—complete with nature walks, wood-fired hot tubs, and views towards Pen y Fan. It’s a proper back-to-nature escape with bees at the centre.

Useful Links & Further Reading

• Apimondia 2025 — official overview & vision
• ApiEXPO (Bella Center, Hall D — 7,000+ m²)
• Apimondia 2025 — detailed programme & schedule
• Global Honey Bar — concept & countries
• Apimondia Latest — innovation & World Beekeeping Awards updates

Final Word: Learn Globally, Act Locally

Apimondia’s power is in its mix—science, craft, and community. We’re taking those insights and implementing them here at Brecon Beecombs: from hive sensors to honey protocols, from guided tastings to collaborative research. If you’d like to see (and taste) what that looks like, come by for a session—or stay the weekend with our friends and neighbours at The Good Life Wales. We’ll have the hot tubs warming and the tasting spoons ready.

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