Out Of The Comb
Since 2021, our research team has been running a project in many parts of Greece that is pioneering both nationally and internationally, bringing beekeeping knowledge to a wider audience through a peer-to-peer system.
In each area, we select young beekeepers with experience in queen rearing and train them for 20 days. We then provide the materials and resources they need to contact local beekeepers and offer hands-on training in queen rearing, which remains one of the least familiar areas of beekeeping today. Field sessions are organised in which the trainer and queen breeder demonstrates the process, answers participants’ questions, produces new queens from selected genetic stock and provides each participating beekeeper with up to 30 queen cells free of charge. In this way, many new beekeepers and experienced professionals become familiar with queen rearing, understand its importance and gain the skills to apply it in their own work. This knowledge is essential to the future of beekeeping: it encourages colony monitoring, selection of the best colonies for disease resistance, adaptation to climate change, gentleness, productivity and other traits, and propagation of the best genetic stock to create the colonies of the future.
Through our partner queen breeders, this initiative trained 880 beekeepers in Thessaly in 2022–2023 and produced 26,370 queen cells. We then trained 305 beekeepers in Evia, producing 9,150 queen cells. In 2025–2026, a further 260 beekeepers in the rest of Central Greece gained hands-on experience in queen rearing and received 7,750 queen cells produced from their own selected colonies.
By establishing local groups of trainers wherever the project operates, we have also been able to mobilise them for disaster relief, as we did in Thessaly in 2024 following Storm Daniel. We activated the team to mass-produce queen cells from selected genetic stock for beekeepers affected by the disaster. Using a strict, objective and fair allocation method, we provided queen cells in proportion to each beekeeper’s losses and business size. More than 27,000 queen cells were delivered to those affected in 2024, followed by another 10,000 in 2026, demonstrating our sustained presence and support for primary production.
Over five years, our queen-rearing activities have trained or supported approximately 2,000 beekeepers and produced more than 80,000 queen cells from selected genetic stock drawn from colonies in each project area, distributed free of charge to participants.
Our supporters and partners include the NGO New Agriculture New Generation, through a founding grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, the John S. Latsis Public Benefit Foundation, APIVITA, regional authorities and other private organisations.
Benefits and prospects
Through face-to-face training for every interested beekeeper, we share knowledge with a broad audience and strengthen the University’s contribution to society. We are committed to the European Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation System (AKIS), which connects research and knowledge with agricultural production and is a key pillar of the Common Agricultural Policy for strengthening knowledge flows across the EU.
This knowledge directly contributes to modernising production and managing natural resources sustainably. Selecting and producing good genetic stock enables today’s beekeepers to meet current challenges. Informed beekeepers with the skills to propagate their best colonies are better equipped to address the constraints of climate change, emerging diseases and a competitive market for their products.
Improving genetic stock benefits not only participating beekeepers but the entire surrounding area, as these traits spread through drones and mating that takes place outside the hive.
Propagating colonies with desirable traits extends the benefits beyond the beekeeping community. More numerous, capable and resilient bees pollinate local crops more effectively, increasing agricultural production through this free service. Beekeepers become partners to farmers, to their mutual benefit: crops provide food for bees, and colonies support and increase crop fruit set. This quiet relationship of mutual coexistence helps sustain human life through food production. In the EU, 84% of crops benefit from pollination, mainly by bees. Of the 1,400 cultivated plant species worldwide, 80% require pollination, while more than 50% of global fat and oil production comes from plants that require pollination, including oil palm, sunflower, flax and rapeseed. Globally, pollination services are worth more than US$3 trillion.