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Honey worth $3.9m exported in 2007-08

By Razi Syed

KARACHI: The country exported around $3.9 million worth of honey during 2007-08, a spokesman for honey exporters association said Monday.

Pakistan has achieved self-sufficiency in honey production and was now able to export prime quality produce at competitive prices in the global market.

World Honey production is around 1.4 million tones while six countries concentrate 50 percent of total world production.

Senior member of the trading body, Jawed A Khan urged the government to provide help to the industry so that it could further invest in the latest technology. “Pakistan produces around 50,000 tonnes honey annually,” he added.

He said Argentina occupies the third place as honey producer worldwide, after China and the United States. Its production volume represents 70 percent of South American honey, 25 percent of American honey and 6 percent of total world production.

He said an increase in the average yield of honey per colony from 5 kg to 21.5 kg had been achieved by our farmers.

He said buyers from India, China, Saudi Arabia and Uzbekistan has shown great interest in making deals for honey.

He said according to record, more than 241,000 colonies of honeybee in all four provinces and Azad Kashmir were working with advanced technology.

He said the European bees were first introduced some 22 years ago and after consistent efforts now it has more than 154,000 colonies being managed by 11,500 beekeepers.

Virus cannot survive in the honey due to its quality to absorb water and a 100 grams of honey contains 303 calories, he said.

The best time for beekeeping is from October to November and the spring season, however, honey could be produced throughout the year by planting some special species of plants, he added.

He said development of new bee management techniques, production and distribution of genetically superior honeybee queens are vital to achieve significant progress.

An official of the Honeybee Research Institute said the institute provided training to people in beekeeping through different courses.

He said inexperienced labour in honeybee manufacturing could cause health hazards while the department was striving for the promotion of the use of honeybees for pollination of vegetables, seeds, fodder and fruit crops for higher yield and development of a low cost comb foundation locally to replace costly imported metal sheets used by farmers.

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