The honey will be served in “the national honey jars”.
This December, all first-grade students in Croatian primary schools will receive a jar of honey produced by Croatian beekeepers. This is an idea developed by the Ministry of Agriculture, which is currently considering a draft of the School Honeymoon Programme, valued at two million kuna. The programme will educate children and parents about the importance of honey consumption, and the goal is to provide better conditions for positioning Croatian honey producers on the market, reports Večernji List on August 9, 2018.
The School Honey Day will be marked on December 7, when the first-grade students will receive their jars of honey. Each student will receive 370 millilitres of honey, for which the Ministry is planning to pay 60 kuna per kilogram plus VAT, and it will be packed in a “national honey jar,” in accordance with the standards of the Croatian Beekeeping Association, with a label of the manufacturer and a special label “Honey of Croatian Bees”.
In addition, the ministry will organise “the honey breakfast with Croatian bees,” as well as different educational events that will inform the students about the importance of beekeeping for agriculture and biodiversity. The children will also be provided with educational picture books on the basics of beekeeping. A total of 1.2 million kuna will be spent on this part of the programme, and the public call will be published by the Agricultural Payments Agency, announced the ministry.
In addition, the ministry plans to assist beekeepers in producing “the national honey jars,” and for this purpose additional 800,000 kuna will be allocated. This is a project recently launched by the Croatian Beekeeping Association, faced with the problem of imported honey frequently being marketed as coming from Croatia. In order to make the honey produced by Croatian beekeepers more recognizable, the Croatian Beekeeping Association announced a competition last year and selected a design by Klara Marelić. The jars will be presented to the public in a special marketing campaign.
The grant for producing the national honey jar will be awarded for jars of 210 and 580 millilitres, and the special tool for producing the jars will remain in the permanent ownership of the Croatian Beekeeping Association and will be used exclusively for making national honey jars.
Translated from Večernji List (reported by Iva Boban Valečić).
