OPINION

By Simon Tuner

While imported honey is packaged well and looks very good, clear and thick yellow as we would expect good honey to be, unbeknownst to the consumer, it is very low-grade honey, basically reconstituted corn syrup.

It dominates the honey aisle on supermarket shelves and presents a real concern to the consumer for its poor health benefits and for the growth of the Ugandan economy as a whole.

Imported honey is produced on large commercial farms that pay bee-keepers to bring their beehives to pollinate crops and increase their overall farm yields. Commercial farmers are aware of the monetary benefit of honeybees pollinating their crops raising their yields by 30-50% so they pay the beekeeper good money to bring their beehives onto their farms. According to the US Department of Agriculture, pollination services contribute between $235-577 billion in economic value toward global food production (2019). Over 9.5% of the world’s total food production comes from honeybee pollination.

The almond farms in California are completely reliant on honeybee pollination for yield. A bee-keeper will get paid $150-200 (about sh550,000 to sh735,000) per beehive for bringing their hives during blossoming. An average commercial beekeeper with 500 beehives will make $75,000-100,000 in one month from this undertaking. The income from this is so great that nearly all commercial beekeepers in the US truck their hives across the country for this economic windfall.

Although this comes at a cost. Commercial farms are mono-crops that are sprayed with fungicides and pesticides that weaken and kill honeybees. Being a mono-crop, the lack of a varied diet weakens the bee’s immunity so the beekeeper will use an internal feeder filled with corn syrup liquid with antibiotics to keep the bees alive. Colony death is high, but the beekeeper is not so worried as re-queening costs about $25, a minimal cost negated from the overall profit. Honey production from this practice is very low-grade and is sold off cheaply to factories and unsuspecting countries for some extra profit.

Back here in Uganda, if you take a look at many of the imported honey on supermarket shelves, you will find this honey. Most labels will state “Product of Australia” although it is this low-grade honey from other countries. It is ultra-filtered to take out the pollen content which defines its botanical region and country of origin then shipped to Australia and a small amount of Australian honey is added so it can be labelled “Product of Australia”. It is then trans-shipped off in bulk for packing in the Middle East, where it is then sold off to poor countries. This process is called “tarns-shipping”.

All this comes back to you as you’re running your fingers along the supermarket shelves and come across the honey aisle. You see this very nice-looking, expensive imported honey but what you are getting is totally something else.

Local honey on the other hand is produced by farmers who are using integrated farming methods with diverse crops that provide very good nectar diversity for bees and a rich pure honey with high nutrition content. We are often let down by improper harvesting from farmers not wearing bee suits and over-smoking the beehives at night, which leads to a darker smokier honey but the quality of honey you are getting from Ugandan honey is far and above what you get from imported honey. All at a lesser price.

Further to this, there is a direct economic loss from importing products. We are also not stimulating agricultural production at the farmer level by flooding our markets with low-grade imported honey.

Also, the value of bee-keeping itself in Uganda is very high as the increased crop yields from pollination is an unrealised potential here that can lead to increased food security, overall agricultural income, and improved quality of agricultural products.