Guidelines to improve local production of honey

In Europe more than 50% of the used honey is imported from extra-community countries. In Italy, local honeys suffer the competition with the lower prices of those imported. To enhance internal production of honey, the European Community has economically supported beekeepers by means of two subsequent programmes: 1221/97 and 797/04. Within this scenario, we have worked several years to give useful information to local administration and beekeeper associations interested in producing honey of high-quality standard to be labelled with certified declaration of origin. New protocols were also tested when traditional methods did not completely satisfy specific aims. Some of these protocols have been used in the study area of Sorrento Peninsula (Southern Italy) and we believe that this approach can be proposed as a guideline and applied to other geographical areas. We have synthesized part of our experience defining 4 main steps hereby described.