Recap of Apimondia, European honeys, and What’s Next at Diggin’ Livin’
Here we are at the end of another honey season — and yes, we’re still extracting!
Partly because this fall we took a big European beekeeping trip that began at Apimondia 2025 in Copenhagen and carried us through Norway, Denmark, Germany, France, Switzerland, and Italy.
We wanted to share a few highlights and thoughts from the road.
Norway: Where Beekeeping = Food Security
We landed first in Bergen, Norway, where we met with local beekeepers and learned that honey production there is considered part of national food security.
The government actually supports beekeepers with $1,000–$4,000 per bee yard per year, whether or not they make honey.
Beekeeping is treated as a protected trade — no importation of bees or queens is allowed — and you must complete certifications before keeping bees. Queens can cost over $200 each, but the result is pure lineage and strong regional resilience.
Apimondia 2025: A Global Gathering
In Copenhagen, we joined 7,000 attendees from 131 countries across six major commissions: Apitherapy, Bee Biology, Beekeeping Economy, Bee Health, Rural Development, and Pollination & Flora.
One of the most moving sessions was on global honey economics.
A U.S. beekeeper stood before a panel representing China, Ukraine, Taiwan, India, and Argentina and spoke plainly:
“U.S. beekeepers have been stuck with the same honey price for 30 years, while every expense we face has quadrupled. In the 1980s we produced 75% of our nation’s honey. Now? Barely 30%.”
He asked the question that’s been on our minds too:
Shouldn’t honey be considered a matter of national food sovereignty?
What if we stopped importing foreign honey altogether—or at least imposed tariffs steep enough to restore true American-made honey to the market?
Because none of us needs fake honey.
What we need are living, local economies that keep real beekeepers thriving.
At Apimondia, there was a global honey bar where we could sample honeys from every corner of the world — so many different flavors, textures, colors, and scents that it felt like traveling through ecosystems in a single afternoon.
We brought home about twenty-five different honeys from our European trip. After the conference in Copenhagen, our kids joined us and we drove a seven-meter camper van all the way down to the Amalfi Coast of Italy, tasting honey wherever we went.
One thing we noticed: in the northern countries, it’s completely normal for beekeepers to cream or whip their honey before bottling — creating a smooth, crystallized texture that never hardens. But the farther south we traveled, the more liquid honeys we found, likely because of the warmer climate and the tradition of enjoying honey in its natural pourable form.
When we returned home, we celebrated Joy’s 50th birthday with a tasting bar of many European honeys, inviting friends and family to sample them all — Acacia (black locust) honey from France, Lavender honey from France, Tilia (Linden) honey from Italy, Heather honey from Denmark, Summer Wildflower from Denmark, Mountain honey (mostly chestnut) from Northern Italy, Chestnut honey from Central Italy, Honeydew from Italy, Rose honey from a 1,000-year-old rose garden at St. Michael’s Cathedral in Hildesheim, Germany — as well as our own Diggin’ Livin’ Spring Vetch, Madrone/Maple, and Star Thistle.
One of the best parts of being part of these international gatherings is connecting with fellow beekeepers and friends from around the world — including the Adaptive Bee Breeders Alliance, the OSU Honey Bee Lab, and members of the American Apitherapy Society Board, and we made lots of new friends especially on our Denmark/Norway beekeeping tours.
It’s always humbling to be reminded that no matter where we go, beekeeping is a shared language — one of sweetness, devotion, and care for the land.
• What’s Next
Back home in Southern Oregon, we’re wrapping up the last extractions and getting ready to announce something special.
We’re adding to our Kajabi online course listings with our upcoming Apitherapy Course — a deep dive into the healing power of the hive for practitioners, homesteaders, and honey-hearted learners.
We’ll share details soon. Until then, thank you for being part of our community and for believing, like we do, that healing is reciprocal:
Healthy bees make potent medicine, which makes healthy people and healthy landscapes and back again.
With gratitude and sweetness,
Joy & Eric McEwen
Diggin’ Livin’ Farm & Apiaries