“Sweet news”: More than successful year for beekeepers

Despite the drought, this year has brought a lot of honey, especially when we talk about locust tree honey, which is the most important for beekeepers, so because there is a lot of it, the retail price has not changed significantly, but the wholesale price is lower than last year, as President of the Belgrade Association of Beekeepers Stanko Rajic told Tanjug.

„Unlike in previous years, this year was more than a good year, I cannot say record-breaking, but close to that,“ Rajic says, adding that when a year begins well, the rest of it is good.

Regarding export, Rajic points out that there is currently a standby because no one has yet come out with a clear price, leaving doubt among beekeepers.

He adds that two years ago, the Federation of Beekeeping Organizations of Serbia commissioned a plant for the purchase and processing of honey in Raca, with the idea that most of the honey produced in Serbia should be purchased and marketed on the foreign market through that plant, in order to, as he points out, achieve the highest possible price.

Due to the emergence and increasing presence of counterfeit honey on the market, Rajic says that exceptional efforts have been made for years to suppress this and that chemical analysis of honey is the only definitive and precise indicator.

“At the World Honey Congress in Canada, in 2019, as many as 40 percent of honey samples were defective. It is very difficult for an ordinary citizen to assess whether honey is real, and without chemical analysis it is very difficult,“Rajic says.

He adds that the Belgrade Association of Beekeepers performs a chemical pollen analysis of honey from small urban apiaries every year in the Center for Food Testing, thus obtaining confirmation that the honey is impeccably clean.

Izvor: Politika, Tanjug

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