Sugar price surge makes honey business bitter, survival at stake for beekeepers
Rising sugar costs are severely impacting beekeepers, who rely on it to feed colonies during nectar scarcity. Unchanged honey prices mean businesses are unsustainable, risking thousands of hives.
Rising sugar costs are severely impacting beekeepers, who rely on it to feed colonies during nectar scarcity. Unchanged honey prices mean businesses are unsustainable, risking thousands of hives.
Rising sugar costs are severely impacting beekeepers, who rely on it to feed colonies during nectar scarcity. Unchanged honey prices mean businesses are unsustainable, risking thousands of hives.
Iritty: A steep rise in sugar prices, the lifeline for bee colonies during the lean season, is squeezing beekeepers, who are struggling to keep their hives fed even as honey prices remain largely unchanged.
From June to December, when natural sources of nectar and pollen are scarce, beekeepers rely on sugar syrup to feed their colonies. Any delay in feeding can drive entire bee colonies out of their hives, while those left behind weaken for want of food and eventually perish under attacks from pests such as wax moths and wasps.
Sugar syrup is crucial for building strong colonies ahead of the honey season, which runs from January to March. Once the honey season begins, the bees rely entirely on nectar from flowers and do not take sugar syrup even when it is offered.
While sugar cost ₹40-42 a kg around this time last year, the price has now crossed ₹70, adding to the mounting input costs faced by beekeepers. Most have therefore not started feeding sugar syrup, which has left many hives to deteriorate for want of proper feeding and care. Usually, around 20 hives are kept in a single plantation, with each beekeeper’s hives spread across rubber plantations within a 5-6 km radius. A decline in maintenance could put 10,000 to 20,000 hives at risk, according to beekeepers.
The crisis has been compounded by the fact that honey prices have not risen in proportion to the increase in production costs. Beekeepers say they cannot sustain the business even if they get ₹500 a kg for honey.
Kannur and Kasaragod districts together have an estimated more than two lakh beehives, most of them belonging to beekeepers from Marthandam in Tamil Nadu. Around 10 beekeepers in the region own more than 5,000 hives each, while over 50 have more than 1,000 hives apiece.
Each hive requires an average of 10 kg of sugar between June and December, though the requirement varies depending on rainfall and weather conditions. The rising cost of feeding, therefore, has a direct impact on the cost of maintaining thousands of colonies.
Meanwhile, beekeepers point out that the availability of honey from rubber trees, an important source of nectar, has declined. Leaf fall and diseases such as blight further affect the bees.
They also attribute the decline in honey production partly to the cultivation of newer varieties of rubber trees, which they say yield less nectar. A colony that once produced up to 20 kg of honey now yields only 6-7 kg.
Rising travel costs and higher wages for workers with beekeeping skills have added to the burden, while most beekeepers depend on bank loans and interest-bearing borrowings to run their operations.
“Beekeeping has been my livelihood for a quarter of a century, but the rise in sugar prices has now brought me to a point where I may have to give it up,” said Unnikrishnan of Koyipparambath in Edacheri. “Honey prices are not rising in proportion to the cost of production, while the declining availability of honey from newer varieties of rubber trees has added to the crisis,” he added.