Encouraging Beekeepers to Harness Multi-billion Dollar Industry

The global honey industry is estimated at $10bn, an industry that Nigeria can harness by empowering traditional bee keepers in the country. Oluchi Chibuzor reports that such intervention will undoubtedly denote the Federal Government’s backward integration initiatives

In spite of Nigeria’s lukewarm attitude, beekeeping has emerged a multibillion global industry that is offering invaluable benefits to the health of humanity. The industry is important in terms of food security, poverty reduction, health, environmental protection and plant pollination. Indeed, the global market demand for honey and other hive products has increased tremendously in recent decades since discovery of its importance in a wide variety of uses and applications.

Last year, the global honey market size was valued at $9.21 billion and is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8.2 percent with demand for nutritious food products, such as honey, on account of growing awareness about the benefits of maintaining a healthy lifestyle.

Honey is an excellent source of numerous nutritional ingredients, including vitamins, minerals, calcium, and antioxidants and has been noted to possess several medicinal properties that can help improve metabolic activities, maintain blood pressure levels, reduce the risk of diabetes, and can even heal burn wounds.

Thus, honey is widely used in many applications apart from food & beverages, such as cosmetics and pharmaceuticals, which have been highlighted as major co-drivers market growth.

According to an India and US based market research firm, Grand View Research, the production and supply of honey depends on a country’s climatic conditions; hence a number of regions, such as North and South America, Asia, and Europe hold the majority of production.

According to Grandview Research, China has emerged as a key exporter of honey to Europe and North America in the past few years, while Europe accounted for the largest market share of more than 34 percent in 2020.

The research noted that Europe is majorly self-sufficient as almost 60 percent of the honey consumed in the region is produced within the continent, according to the European Commission’s statistics for 2020. In addition, major players in the region invest significant amounts in maintaining their production and supply chain.

Asia Pacific is anticipated to be the fastest-growing regional market from 2021 to 2028 as the presence of a large number of honey producers in some of its emerging countries, such as China and India, is expected to remain a favorable factor for the region’s growth.

Meanwhile, for Africa, honey remains a neglected industry as most of its production is consumed locally. Several countries in the continent, including Ethiopia, Tanzania, Angola, Kenya, Central Africa Republic, Mali, Algeria, Morocco, Rwanda, Cameron, Senegal, Madagascar, Egypt, and Zambia are known as natural honey producers.

For Nigeria, production has always been export-driven for professional beekeepers, while producers from rural communities control the domestic market, along with some foreign products.

Another factor affecting the industry in Nigeria is lack of proper record keeping in determining the national production figure for the country.

In 2018, Mr. Dauda Abbas, the official in-charge of Apiculture at Audu Bako College of Agriculture, Kano State, said the current production of honey liquid in Nigeria was two million metric tons but the expected production could be over 20 million tons.

With the right investment the sector has the potential to meet the demands of the local market and has direct benefits to pharmaceutical companies, as well as the food and beverage segments.

While the importance of investment cannot be overemphasized, the development of the honey market in the country mirrors many other agricultural markets, where inefficient skills development, knowledge sharing and technological development are hindering growth of the sector, rather than access to finance.

With the varroa mite ravaging bees all over the world, Nigerian bees are known to be resistant to the varroa mite, which is an advantage to the country.

Speaking to our reporter in Owerri, a professional Apiculturist and the CEO of Apifloral Resources, Mr. Emmanuel Ubah, said Africa remains the only place where you can produce bees without using Amitraz, a chemical used in the beekeeping business.

“The chemical is used to suppress the growth of that varroa mite. It is a mite that transfers about eighteen viruses to the honeybees. It is here in our bee colonies but they do not harm our bees. It does not affect them. If you go to Israel, you cannot talk about bee production without using chemicals.”

He noted that it was because “Nigerian bees have a particular genetic quality to survive wherever there is a problem; they leave that environment to another place and begin afresh. But for the foreign bees, if there is a problem, they do not move, they die there with it.

“We ought to take the advantage of these characteristics which make our honey the best in the international market. It is only in Africa that you will see indigenous bees surviving without medicine,” he noted.

Nigeria’s Honey Industry Potential Bee farming in the country is majorly characterized as underdeveloped with active players found mostly in the rural areas.

With Nigeria’s domestic consumption rate of honey not specific, figures from the National Apiculture Programme put the figure at 380,000 tonnes in 2017, with a global price of about $4.5 billion, while Ubah puts the figure at 440,000 tons per annum.

However, the figures are not to be compared to Nigeria’s annual import bill of €1.84 billion worth of honey, as stated by Mr. David Musa, general manager of Barg Natural Honey, Nigeria and consultant to the United States Agency for International Development.

Underscoring the importance of the industry, at World Bee Conference organised by the Nigeria-USA Chamber of Commerce in Cleveland, Ohio, the Consul-General of Nigeria in New York, Ambassador Lot Egopija, described bee farming as an untapped gold mine in Nigeria capable of generating more than $10 billion in annual revenue for the nation fragile economy.

Egopija explained that a barrel of honey cost more than a barrel of crude oil, which is currently Nigeria’s black gold.

He noted that, “Bee farming is an untapped gold mine in Nigeria as a barrel of honey costs more than a barrel of crude oil. It is estimated that the industry can generate over ten billion dollars annually.

“In addition to honey, bee farming yields byproducts such as beeswax, bee venom, and propolis that have industrial use in the pharmaceutical, food and beverage industries. Research has shown that quality bee farming is viable in the rural areas of at least eight states across Nigeria,’’ he said.

Despite its import substitution abilities, its operation has been plagued by such factors like insect pests, diseases and pesticides poisoning, which experts said were responsible for the annual decline in honey bee colony establishment.

Also, in a study titled, ‘Challenges Associated with the Honey Bee (Apis Mellifera Adansonii) Colonies Establishment in South Western Nigeria’, by Akinwande Kayode and others, of the department of Zoology, University of Lagos, beekeeping has been part of the normal traditional agricultural enterprise of the Oyos in Okeogun and Tivs in Benue.

The study noted that honey production has always been on the decline and never satisfies local demand as bees’ behaviour such as regular absconding and aggressiveness has contributed to low colony establishment and many people find it difficult to work with the bees or study them or rear the queens because they attack readily. National Apiculture Programme Despite the Executive order NO.002 of 2017 on the Ease of Doing Business to remove the bottlenecks inhibiting investment in Nigeria, the National Apiculture Programme, has not met its objective since the establishment by the then Minister of Agriculture, Audu Ogbeh.

But having hosted the largest Africa Apiculture Trade in 2018, which in some quarters the Ministry of Agriculture paid $5,000 to secure the bidding right in an effort to create the needed awareness for the industry, the sector has not witnessed a quantum leap to meet its expectation in terms of increase in production and supply and a reduction in price.

In addition, bee farming activities are currently in the rural areas as farmers still engage in crude ways of harvesting product through application of smokes and pesticides to disperse the bees.

Speaking at a national training on honey production, bee health and pollination, the director, Department of Veterinary & Pest Control Services, FMARD at the Africa Union Inter African Bureau for Animal Resources (AU-IBAR), Gideon Mshelbwala, had noted that the honey industry in Nigeria is very profitable with great potential that could be leveraged as the country strives to move away from a mono oil economy to a non-oil economy.

But unfortunately, he said the “sector still remains widely untapped as most beekeepers in the rural areas still use outdated techniques in production”, as the primary interest and product of the industry is liquid honey which accounts for about 95 percent of the resources.

According to him, “Apart from inadequate or poor infrastructure, such as roads and access to farm input, most bee farmers cannot access inputs, rural services and extension information to take advantage of its growing demand. There is also an absence of coordination in the form of farmer’s cooperatives to achieve scale,” he stated. Unethical Beekeeping Production Methods According to Ubah, the honey in Nigeria are majorly sourced from the traditional bee keepers and they often use fire to harvest the honey, and “in that process the quality of the honey is diminished.”

But as modern beekeepers, he stressed the importance of using an instrument called “The smoker” to obtain quality honey.

“We have not been able to produce enough for the entire population of this country. Nigeria consumes about 440,000 tons of honey per annum and we produce just ten percent.

“The gap is so much. The major problem we have in Nigeria is that people don’t even know modern techniques in beekeeping. Some people don’t even believe you can keep bees and produce honey.

The Hebrew University trained expert, who has spent much of his time on extension and training programmes, noted that “we train people and expose them to several opportunities in beekeeping.

“And in Nigeria today, I don’t think there’s an institution that offers beekeeping as a course. In Israel, Hebrew University offers it as a course from first degree to PhD. It is the only university of Dan salaam in Tanzania that offers it from first degree to PhD.”