Honey, honey
Taiwan beekeepers battle to cash in on pure honey buzz.
Ilan: Under a shady starfruit tree, Taiwanese beekeeper Jiang Hwanbin tends his hives, pumping out pure honey for a rapidly growing market of health-conscious consumers.
Jiang’s family has been keeping bees for 80 years and he now manages 500 hives in the northwest county of Hsinchu.
In total his family run around 2,000 hives across northern Taiwan.
A string of food safety scandals in Taiwan has driven demand for clean, traceable produce, with pure honey seen as particularly beneficial – whether stirred into water as a summer thirst-quencher or used as a sugar substitute in desserts.
But although domestic appetite is voracious and prices high, beekeepers say it is hard to fully capitalise as climate change and disease hamper expansion.
This year alone saw a series of typhoons and an unusually cold January affecting early blossoms.
Jiang, 54, who sells most of his produce through his shop in Hsinchu city under the name “Ah-bin Pure Honey”, says his production fell by 30% due to the adverse conditions.
The situation for the whole family is even worse; overall production across their hives has dropped by two thirds, he says.
The unpredictability of the seasons is reflected in islandwide honey output over the past five years.
Taiwan produced 11,726 tonnes of honey in 2015, more than double in a decade, with the number of farms going up by over a fifth to 860.
The industry is worth Tw$2.7bil (RM360mil) annually.
But production has been unstable since 2011, when it peaked at 15,000 tonnes, with extreme weather being a major factor.
Jiang says his fundamental focus is now disaster prevention.
“What we can do is manage the bees well and do our best to keep more bees. The rest depends on the weather,” he said.
Disease problems troubling beekeepers around the world have also taken their toll on Jiang’s stock.
In 2005, he saw half his bees wiped out by a bacterial infection.
He quarantined his queens, burned the infected hive frames, and started again, sharing hard lessons with other local beekeepers.
The government says it is also giving bee farmers advice on disease prevention and the violent weather swings.
“In Taiwan, climate change has been huge,” says Wu Tzu-hsien, a senior apiculture expert for the government’s agriculture ministry.
“If the changes are too extreme, bees cannot control their body temperature and die.”
In Yilan county in the northeast of Taiwan, the “Bee Farmer” cafe and education centre sits against a backdrop of misty mountains.
Visitors come mainly from Taiwan, although some from Hong Kong and Singapore also drop in.
The business belongs to Huang Tung-ming, a fourth generation bee farmer who manages 300 hives in the area.
He has diversified to prosper, selling produce from other local bee farmers as well as his own.
There are 10 “Bee Farmer” shops around Taiwan but the company sells mostly online through its Chinese-language website, a more modern approach than most traditional beekeeping families.
The business brings in Twd$50 mil (RM6.59mil) each year.
“Now with the internet, with branding, packaging and a corporate image, it’s much easier than before,” says Huang.
Building a bee brand has helped Huang offset the challenges of bad weather and bee health, both of which have affected his farms.
Despite the pressures, his son Huang Chun-yen, 33, who helps run the business, says there are keen young bee farmers in the face of Taiwan’s economic stagnation.
“Young people can’t find jobs that pay well,” he says.
“As the value of bee products is high, young people go to farming villages to learn to keep bees and develop their careers.” — AFP