Beekeepers in the German capital have suffered a significant decrease in honey harvest last year.
Berlin’s apiarists produced just 30.4 kilogrammes of honey per colony in 2023, according to a survey by the Centre for Bees and Beekeeping in Mayen, Rhineland-Palatinate.
In 2022, they generated 35.5 kilogrammes on average.
No information has been provided regarding the general or individual reasons for last year’s decline.
Apiculture is increasingly popular among young residents of cities in Germany.
As of December 2021, the Berlin Beekeeping Association had more than 1,400 members. One in three were women, the organisation, which did not provide more recent figures, said.
While apiarists in Berlin struggled in 2023, their colleagues in the state of Brandenburg, which surrounds the federal capital city, look back on a successful year.
Polls show that Brandenburg-based beekeepers harvested 45.1 kilogrammes of honey on average in 2023, 400 grammes more than in the previous year.
Compared to 2021 when their operations were hampered by lots of rain, the 2023 figures mean an improvement of even 12.2 kilogrammes.
Germany is among Europe’s 10 leading producers of honey. The country’s professional and leisure-time honey farm managers are in charge of 1.1 million honeybee colonies.
The population of a honeybee colony can vary from 10,000 to 65,000 adult bees, research by late entomologist Prof Clayton Leon Farrar has shown.
One 500-gramme jar of honey produced in Germany costs around EUR 6.50 (GBP 5.56). Many of the country’s apiarists saw themselves forced to demand more from their customers due to rising prices for energy and equipment.
