The honey market in Europe

• Hungarian beekeepers under enormous price pressure

Dear friends of the foundation.

Our stance on honey production is well known. Nevertheless, we are addressing this issue here because we see a serious threat to Hungary as a location for beekeeping, as more and more beekeepers are giving up for economic reasons. First, a few facts about the quantities of honey produced:

Within the European Community, this amounts to approximately 250,000 tonnes of honey per year. The largest producers are, in order: Hungary, Romania, Germany and Spain, each producing over 20,000 tonnes per year.

However, approximately 450,000 tonnes are marketed, meaning that around 200,000 tonnes of honey are imported. Imports mainly come from China, Ukraine, Argentina and Mexico. While the production costs for domestic honey are around €5.60 per kilo, imported honey costs around €2.25.

We recently had a meeting with Hungarian beekeepers, during which we received some worrying information. It was reported that many beekeepers are giving up their bee colonies because it is no longer economically viable to continue. Previously, beekeepers received prices of 910 forints per kilogram from wholesalers, which corresponds to approximately £2.30. Now, the same wholesalers are only paying 475 forints, which corresponds to approximately £1.20.

This import pressure is upsetting the market balance.

The sales revenues currently being achieved are significantly below the costs incurred. This affects small beekeepers with up to 20 colonies less. They usually market their honey themselves. However, all beekeepers with more than this number are dependent on wholesalers as sales intermediaries.

The fall in prices is due to enormous import pressure from China. This honey is offered to wholesalers at between €1 and €1.25. As wholesalers can only pass on this ‘price advantage’ to a limited extent, they can generate significantly higher profits in this way. Consumer prices remain unaffected.

If this trend continues, there is a serious threat to the bee population in Hungary.

Let's be clear: we do not want to ‘advertise’ so-called honey production here. But given the threats bees are already facing, if many beekeepers were to stop working, the bee population would be further reduced. This must be avoided, even if we accept the premise of tolerating honey extraction from beehives. We assume that the purchase prices currently offered by Chinese wholesalers are a promotional campaign aimed at significantly increasing their own export opportunities and thus gaining market share by reducing honey production in Europe. We recognise this pattern in many other industries as well. From our perspective, this needs to be addressed politically. Consumers, and therefore all of us, can also influence this trend by choosing European products when buying honey. This is not difficult, at least at the moment, given the stable high retail prices.

We will continue to monitor and report on this issue.

With warm regards from early autumn,

Klaus Heinzel

Founder