Diego Pagani is the president of Conapi, the National Consortium of Beekeepers. The organization has more than 450 members, they oversee regional quality control and they distribute 2,300 tons of honey each year. Pagani, his brother, his uncle and cousins are all beekeepers. He remembers a time when most Italian farms kept a couple of beehives to provide enough honey for family and friends. In an interview with DW, he explained that things changed with the arrival of the varroa mite in Italy in the early 1980s. "The tradition of micro-beekeeping has completely disappeared," said Pagani. "Beekeeping has had to become a specialist scientific profession which involves constant study of biology and chemistry."