Peter Kozmus

Peter Kozmus has been a beekeeper since 1994. Since 2011, he has been the professional head of the breeding programme for the Carniolan honey bee
Peter KOZMUS has been a beekeeper since 1994. In 2003 he was Secretary-General of the Apimondia Congress, which was held in Slovenia. Since then, he has attended all the Apimondia congresses and actively participated in them, with the exception of the Congress in Australia in 2007. He is involved in many projects in the field of beekeeping in Slovenia.

Since 2011, he has been the professional head of the breeding programme for the Carniolan honeybee. He supervised the breeding of queens in Slovenia. He is head of the working group for the review and approval of breeding queen bees. In addition, he was the head of the working group for the preparation of the national programme to improve the production and marketing of honey for the years 2017-2019. Moreover, he holds the second term of office of the President of the Council for Beekeeping at the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Food.

His work has been presented in Austria, Croatia, Serbia, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Argentina, Ukraine, Romania, Scotland, Saudi Arabia and South Korea, to name a few. In addition to the organisation of the Apimondia 2003 congress in Slovenia he participated in the organisation of the Apimedica 2010 Symposium, 11th Coloss Conference 2015 and the International Conference of Beekeeping Organisations in 2010 and 2012.

He is the author or co-author of 8 published original scientific papers, 49 scientific articles and 37 articles from conferences and symposiums. In addition, he is co-author of the books Beekeeping for Everyone, Bumblebees in Slovenia and No Bees, No Life.
In the recent years he has been the coordinator of the initiative to declare 20 May World Bee Day. In 2015 the initiative was proposed to the General Assembly of Apimondia in South Korea, and was unanimously adopted. The proposal was adopted by the UN on 20 December 2017.

In 2017, he attended the 45th APIMONDIA Congress in Istanbul, Turkey, and elected vice president of this organization. In August 2022, he was re-elected as vice-president of Apimondia. In this role, he strives for a better transfer of knowledge to beekeepers and for a more active celebration of World Bee Day.