This Charter sets out the standards required to protect honey bee colonies and the wider pollinator systems they depend on. It defines the conditions necessary for colony continuity, health, and integrity, and provides a framework for how these are applied in practice and in wider land use decisions.
The Bee Rights Charter
Artisan Beekeeping Collective
2026
Purpose
This Charter sets out a clear, evidence based standard for how honey bees should be protected in law, policy, and land use wherever conditions affecting bees are determined. It is written for members of the Artisan Beekeeping Collective, for public readership and policymakers.
The Charter has two functions. First, it explains what protections honey bees require in practical terms. Second, it provides a framework for strengthening public rules that protect honey bees and, where relevant, all pollinators. That broader scope reflects ecological reality. Honey bees do not exist in isolation. Their health depends on landscapes, forage, water, soil, climate, and human activities including land management and the use of pesticides, and disease systems that also affect bumble bees, solitary bees, hoverflies, butterflies, moths, and other pollinating insect and other animal species.
Current European policy reflects that wider understanding. The revised EU Pollinators Initiative and the Nature Restoration Regulation both aim to reverse pollinator decline. Article 10 of Regulation (EU) 2024/1991 establishes a binding requirement to reverse pollinator decline by 2030 and to secure an increasing trend thereafter.
Why this Charter is needed
Pollinators are fundamental to both ecosystems and food systems. The Intergovernmental Science Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services reports that nearly 90% of wild flowering plants and around 75% of leading global food crops depend, at least in part, on pollination. It also highlights that pollinator diversity is essential for stable ecosystems.
In Ireland, national frameworks confirm the scale of decline. The All Ireland Pollinator Plan reports that approximately one third of wild bee species are threatened with extinction.
Ireland’s 4th National Biodiversity Action Plan reports that over half of Ireland’s bee species have undergone substantial decline, with around 30% at risk of extinction.
Foundational Principles
The Charter rests on five principles.
1. A colony is a living system and must be treated as such. It is not a unit of output and not a replaceable production input.
2. The continuity of a colony matters. The routine replacement of losses is not the same thing as protecting the continued existence of colonies over time.
3. Forage, habitat, water, shelter, disease control, and chemical exposure are not separate issues. They are parts of the same conditions of life.
4. Protection must be judged by functional reality, not by labels alone. A landscape may still be classed as agricultural, forestry, marginal, or green
infrastructure, but the real question is whether it still provides sufficient and continuous forage and habitat.
5. Bees must be protected for their own sake. Their ecological role matters, but it is not the sole basis for their protection.
Scope
This Charter applies to managed honey bee colonies and to the environmental conditions required for their continuity, health, and integrity. It also applies, where relevant, to wider pollinator systems where conditions cannot be meaningfully separated.
It covers beekeeping practice, land use decisions, forestry, agriculture, environmental assessment, and supply chains that affect pollinators.
A colony is defined as a full biological system including all castes, brood, comb, stores, microbiological environment, and the surrounding environmental conditions necessary for its survival.
Forage refers to nectar and pollen, and includes access to clean water which are actually accessible to pollinators. Harm includes acute, chronic, cumulative, and sublethal effects.
The Rights
1. Right to Exist and Continue
Every colony has the right to persist over time and not be treated as disposable or routinely replaceable. Colony continuity, rather than numerical replacement, is the relevant standard.
Systems that rely on predictable loss followed by replacement do not meet this standard, regardless of whether overall colony numbers are maintained.
2. Right to Integrity as a Living System
A colony has the right to remain a functioning biological system. Management and environmental conditions must support its structure, behaviour, and long term stability rather than undermining integrity.
This right is engaged where colonies are weakened, stressed, or destabilised in ways that impair function, even where immediate loss does not occur.
3. Right to Adequate and Diverse Sustenance
A colony has the right to continuous access to sufficient, diverse, and uncontaminated forage across the full year. Forage must be understood in terms of continuity and diversity over time, not simply land area or seasonal flowering.
Temporary or seasonal availability does not satisfy this requirement where continuity across the active season is not maintained.
4. Right to Forage Integrity
A colony has the right to the retention of existing forage within its full foraging area. This area must be understood functionally, as the range over which a colony accesses nectar and pollen, rather than as a fixed boundary.
This includes hedgerows, semi natural land, marginal and rough land, field margins, meadows, scrub, open woodland flora, and other mixed vegetation systems that provide nectar and pollen, regardless of agricultural classification or formal designation.
Forage integrity is reduced not only by removal, but by fragmentation, simplification, or disruption of flowering patterns across that area. The removal or degradation of forage within part of the foraging area can reduce overall availability and continuity, even where some forage remains.
The presence of retained areas, planted margins, buffer zones, or newly established habitat does not in itself maintain forage integrity where overall forage availability, diversity, continuity, or accessibility is reduced across the foraging area.
Where forage is removed and replaced, equivalent ecological function must be maintained within relevant timeframes and within the same functional foraging area. Newly established planting, including native planting, does not provide equivalent conditions where this standard is not met.
Where there is uncertainty about whether forage within the foraging area will be maintained, it should not be assumed that no reduction will occur.
5. Right to Habitat
A colony has the right to environmental conditions that sustain it in practice. This includes water, shelter, connected habitat, and the wider environmental conditions required to sustain the colony.
Habitat must be understood as functional. Landscapes can remain vegetated while losing their capacity to support pollinators through reduced diversity, fragmentation, or degradation of soil and plant systems.
Assessment of habitat should consider not only its presence, but its function, including its capacity to support pollinators over time and across seasons.
6. Right to Responsible Care
Where colonies are managed, there is a duty of competent stewardship, including observation, maintenance of stores, disease management, including observation and appropriate response where needed, and appropriate seasonal intervention carried out only where necessary to maintain colony health and stability.
Stewardship should be informed by observation of changing environmental conditions over time.
7. Right to Freedom from Harm
A colony has the right not to be exposed to preventable harm arising from environmental conditions or human activity. Harm includes chemical exposure, contamination, nutritional deficiency, and unsuitable placement.
Harm may arise through cumulative and sublethal effects and does not require immediate colony loss to be present.
Where the effects of an action on pollinators are not clearly established, or where it cannot be demonstrated that forage, habitat, and environmental conditions will be maintained, the action should not proceed.
The absence of complete evidence of impact does not indicate absence of effect.
8. Right to Ecological Fit
A colony has the right to be kept only where the landscape provides the forage, habitat, and wider environmental conditions needed to sustain it. Colony numbers and placement must reflect what the landscape can support and the presence of other pollinators.
A reduction in those conditions does not justify further degradation of the landscape or the treatment of colony displacement as an acceptable outcome.
9. Right to Stable Environmental Conditions
A colony has the right to environmental conditions that are maintained over time.
Land use change reduces forage diversity, disrupts flowering patterns, and weakens the long term ability of the landscape to support pollinators.
Systems based on uniform or low diversity planting do not provide equivalent ecological or forage conditions to mixed and diverse landscapes.
10. Right to Observation and Evidence
Pollinator conditions must be understood through observation over time rather than relying solely on site classification or limited survey data.
Members of the Artisan Beekeeping Collective, through continuous management of colonies and engagement with the landscape, are well placed to observe changes in forage availability, flowering patterns, and colony condition across seasons and years within their locations.
These observations provide site specific evidence derived from repeated engagement with the landscape, rather than single visits or desk based assessment.
Observations that are consistent over time and reflected in colony condition are part of the best available information for assessing environmental change. The absence of formal datasets or published surveys does not indicate absence of impact.
11. Right to Consideration in Land Use Decisions
Land use and environmental decisions affecting pollinators must be based on actual conditions within the landscape, including forage availability, habitat continuity, and the capacity of the landscape to support pollinators over time.
Assessment must use the best available information, including site specific observation derived from repeated engagement with the landscape.
Harm, suspected harm, and deterioration in forage, habitat, or colony condition must be recorded, taken into account, and subject to further investigation where identified.
Such effects must not be dismissed on the basis of incomplete data, absence of formal datasets, or reliance on classification, standardised metrics, or limited survey methods.
12. Right to Non Exploitative Practice
Colonies must not be managed in ways that override their condition or stability. Practices that impose repeated stress or restrict forage diversity are not consistent with this Charter.
This includes systems that involve transporting colonies into uniform or nutritionally limited environments, or management approaches that prioritise yield over colony integrity. Such practices are not compatible with this Charter and are not consistent with the practice of members of the Artisan Beekeeping Collective.
What Existing Law Provides
European and Irish frameworks provide a foundation for pollinator protection through biodiversity policy, pesticide regulation, animal health law, and environmental assessment systems. These include the Animal Health Law, Regulation 2019/6, and the Invasive Alien Species Regulation, along with environmental assessment requirements under the Habitats Directive and the Environmental Impact Assessment Directive.
At EU level, policy direction also includes the Nature Restoration Regulation, which introduces binding requirements for monitoring and reversing pollinator decline.
In Ireland, measures include controls on bee movement under EU animal health rules, the Honey Bee Health Surveillance Programme, and the All Ireland Pollinator Plan, which provides a voluntary framework for habitat and forage improvement.
European law also provides specific mechanisms directly relevant to pollinator protection. Regulation (EC) No 1107/2009 governs the authorisation of plant protection products and requires that substances must not have harmful effects on bee health, including through indirect and sublethal impacts. Directive 2009/128/EC establishes a framework for the sustainable use of pesticides, including risk reduction and the protection of non target organisms such as pollinators.
The Water Framework Directive requires the protection and maintenance of water quality, which forms part of pollinator forage systems. The Environmental Liability Directive establishes a preventative and remedial framework based on the polluter pays principle, requiring action where environmental damage is likely or has occurred.
The Aarhus framework reinforces the role of public participation, access to environmental information, and the use of relevant knowledge in environmental decision making. This includes site specific and observational knowledge where formal datasets are limited or incomplete.
Where the Law is Not Yet Sufficient
Current systems remain incomplete. Protection is often risk based rather than preventative, allowing impacts to proceed where they are assessed as acceptable rather than requiring that harm be avoided.
Habitat protection is frequently voluntary or based on classification rather than on the maintenance of functional forage and habitat conditions across the landscape. Environmental assessment processes do not consistently capture cumulative or incremental loss over time.
Chemical exposure assessment does not fully address repeated, combined, or sublethal effects, and monitoring of residues in forage, wax, and water is limited. Routine testing for agricultural chemical exposure is not included in standard colony health checks or in the investigation of colony losses in Ireland.
Diagnostic systems in Ireland focus primarily on disease and pest surveillance, limiting the ability to identify chemical exposure as a contributing factor in colony decline.
Welfare language for colonies remains limited in law, and bee rights are not recognised as a defined standard. Trade and movement controls do not fully address ecological risks, including disease spread, genetic dilution, and the effects of placing colonies in nutritionally simplified environments.
Protection of managed honey bees is not always aligned with the protection of wild pollinators, including unmanaged and feral colonies, despite shared dependence on the same forage and habitat systems.
The Collective supports:
1. A duty to avoid harm to pollinators, including where uncertainty remains regarding potential impact.
2. Statutory habitat and forage standards that maintain functional forage availability, diversity, and continuity across the full foraging area.
3. Stronger pesticide controls based on current evidence, including consideration of cumulative and sublethal effects and full traceability of usage.
4. Mandatory investigation of pollinator mortality events, including chemical exposure, with transparent reporting of findings.
5. Stronger controls on bee movement and trade, including restriction of movement into nutritionally simplified or single forage environments.
6. Ecological limits on colony density, based on available forage and cumulative environmental pressure.
7. Recognition of Bee Rights, welfare, and integrity within law and policy.
8. Pollinator protection within supply chains and procurement, including requirements for pollinator safe sourcing and land management practices.
Responsibilities of Members
Members undertake to operate within these standards, maintain stable colonies, contribute to forage and habitat, protect and maintain forage conditions across the colony’s wider foraging area, avoid exploitative practices, and act with regard to the wider pollinator system.
Closing Statement
Bee colonies depend on specific environmental conditions: sufficient and diverse forage, stable habitat, sound care, and landscapes that retain ecological capacity. These conditions are not optional. They are the basis on which colonies continue to exist.
Where these conditions are not maintained, pollinator decline arises from identifiable changes in land use, environmental management, and ecological condition, including cumulative and not yet fully understood effects, environmental management, and ecological condition.
This Charter is a living document and will be reviewed and updated by the Artisan Beekeeping Collective as scientific knowledge develops and conditions change.