Groceries
Beekeepers harvest significantly more honey
Beekeepers in Germany have harvested more honey. photo
© Karl-Josef Hildenbrand/dpa
Autumn is here, now the bees are preparing for winter. The honey harvest numbers look promising. If you want to buy a jar of German honey, you have to dig deep into your pockets.
Germany’s beekeepers have had a good harvest this year. An average of 36.7 kilos of honey was harvested per bee colony, 2.3 kilos more than in the previous year, the specialist center said Bees and beekeeping in response to a dpa request 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 twice as large. In the statistics kept since 2012, the annual value was only higher in 2018, when it was 36.9 kilos per bee colony.
“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.” Some colonies can collect up to two kilos of honey per day under favorable conditions.
Price increases overdue
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. The specialist center for bees and beekeeping is responsible for an industry survey, for which this time beekeepers submitted around 13,000 reports – divided into a survey on the early harvest, i.e. the spring harvest, and a survey on the summer harvest.
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.
Beekeepers see the Asian hornet as a threat. This is an invasive species that preys on bees and thereby affects a colony’s collecting behavior. “We have passed the first year in which the Asian hornet appeared massively in Saarland and Rhineland-Palatinate for the first time,” says bee expert Otten. “So far we have only received a few reports of damage, but we definitely have to keep an eye on it.”