Impact of National Apiculture Programmes on Beekeeping Sector in Slovak Republic

Beekeeping plays an important role in European agriculture, not only due to the production of apiculture products, such as honey, wax, pollen, royal jelly but it also contributes to this sector through pollinating crops and developing rural areas. Despite the fact that honey bees play an essential role in agriculture, there has been a decreasing trend in bee population connected with Colony Collapse Disorder which can affect food security in the European Union. Since 2007, the EU has been supporting this sector through national apiculture programmes, including technical assistance, control of varroosis, rationalisation of transhumance, laboratory analyses, restocking beehives and applied research programmes. Each member state can apply for this support, however the budget is allocated according to the number of beehives in each country. Slovak Republic is actively engaged and in 2017 the European Union is planning to allocate around 589 000 euros into the Slovak beekeeping sector. The objective of this paper was to examine the influence of national apiculture programmes on Slovak beekeeping sector. In order to obtain primary data, the questionnaire survey was conducted in 2016 on the sample of 223 Slovak beekeepers. Based on the results, the majority of beekeepers have used this support. The most frequent type of support was rationalisation of transhumance (32.29 %) and technical assistance (26.63 %).