The long, hot and dry summer brought a lot of honey to Germany’s beekeepers. An average of 36.7 kilos of honey was harvested per colony, 2.3 kilos more than in the previous year, said the specialist center for bees and beekeeping in Mayen, Rhineland-Palatinate. Compared to the very rainy year of 2021, in which only 18 kilos were harvested per colony, the harvest quantity is actually twice as large. In the statistics kept since 2012, the annual value was only slightly higher in 2018.
“It was a very good year for bees,” said specialist center manager Christoph Otten. “Thanks to the positive weather, the bees brought in a lot of nectar and the beekeepers were able to extract a lot of honey.” In the meantime there was also precipitation, but this had only a minor influence on the amount of nectar. “Three or four nice days in a row are often enough for the bees to significantly increase their honey production.”
The bad news for consumers: Despite higher production, the price is rising. According to the survey, beekeepers charge 6.50 euros per 500 gram jar of honey, which is around five percent more than last year. “The business costs have increased significantly, so price increases were overdue and still often did not cover costs,” says industry expert Otten. The price of winter food for bees has roughly doubled within a year. Local beekeepers are also very worried about cheap imports from abroad.
There are an estimated 1.1 million bee colonies and 170,000 beekeepers in Germany, the vast majority of whom do this as a hobby or as a sideline. A particularly large amount of honey comes from Bavaria, where, according to the Ministry of Agriculture in Munich, there are around 266,000 bee colonies, an estimated quarter of all bee colonies in Germany.